Managing Director, BGR Group
Sean Cooksey, a former senior official in the Trump administration and on Capitol Hill, works as a Managing Director with BGR Group’s Commerce and Infrastructure Practice. He brings a wealth of executive branch, legislative, and private sector experience to his work with clients on issues ranging from congressional oversight and investigations, competition and antitrust matters, intellectual property and technology policy, and litigation support.
Prior to joining the BGR team, Sean was Counsel to Vice President JD Vance. In this role, he served as the Vice President’s chief legal adviser and a senior policy staffer within the White House. As part of the Trump-Vance administration, he regularly advised the Vice President and senior White House staff on constitutional law, domestic policy, ethics, and executive and judicial nominations.
Previously, Sean was a member of the Federal Election Commission, after being nominated by President Trump in 2020. Sean served on the FEC for four years and was elected Chairman for the 2024 presidential election year, overseeing an agency of 300 staff to administer federal campaign-finance law.
Sean began his political career in the United States Senate, where he served as General Counsel for Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Deputy Chief Counsel for Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). During his tenure in both offices, Sean worked on the Senate’s Committee on the Judiciary on some of the Senate’s most high-stakes matters, including major legislation and two Supreme Court confirmations.
Prior to his Senate service, Sean worked at an international law firm in Washington, D.C., where his practice focused on appeals and constitutional law. He also served as a law clerk for Judge Jerry E. Smith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Houston, Texas.
Sean has appeared on television, on radio, and in print in outlets such as The Ingraham Angle, Varney & Co., Morning Edition, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Axios, and Politico. He speaks regularly at major conferences, including the Republican National Lawyers Association and the National Association of Business PACs.
Founder and Executive Director, National Security Institute; Assistant Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Jamil N. Jaffer is the Founder and Executive Director of the National Security Institute at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University where he also serves as an Assistant Professor of Law, Director of the National Security Law and Policy Program, and Director of the Cyber, Intelligence, and National Security LLM Program. Jamil also teaches classes on counterterrorism, intelligence, surveillance, cybersecurity, and other national security matters, as well as a summer course held abroad with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch. Jamil is also affiliated with Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and previously served as a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2016 to 2019.
Jamil is also a Venture Partner with Paladin Capital Group, where he assists the firm with investments across the full range of its themes and theses, including a focus on dual-use national security technologies. Jamil also serves on the board of directors of RangeForce, a cybersecurity training and readiness platform startup and Tozny, a digital identity startup, and on the advisory boards of U.S. Strategic Metals, North America’s largest primary producer of cobalt, a critical mineral used in EV batteries, aerospace, and other national security applications; and Constella Intelligence, a deep and dark web intelligence startup. Jamil also serves as an advisor to Beacon Global Strategies, a strategic advisory firm and Duco, a technology platform startup that connects corporations with geopolitical and international business experts. Jamil is also the managing director of Trigraph Caveat Capital, a private investment vehicle.
Among other things, Jamil currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Greater Washington Board of Trade, the Board of Advisors for the Global Cyber Alliance, and the Advisory Board of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Center on Cyber and Tech Innovation, the Executive Committee of the Reagan Institute Strategy Group. Jamil is also a Fellow at the Academy for Judaic, Christian, and Islamic Studies, an advisor to the Concordia Summit, and is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Intelligence Policy, the Board of Directors of Speech First, and the Executive Committee of the International Law and National Security Practice Group of the Federalist Society.
Immediately prior to his current positions, from 2015-2021, Jamil served as a senior business leader at IronNet Cybersecurity, helping take the company from a bootstrapped first-year technology products startup through two rounds of venture capital fundraising, growing from 40 employees to over 300, and through its listing on New York Stock Exchange. In his role as IronNet's Senior Vice President for Strategy, Partnerships & Corporate Development, Jamil worked directly for the co-CEOs of the company, Gen (ret.) Keith B. Alexander, the former Director of the National Security Agency and Founding Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, and Bill Welch, the former COO of Zscaler and Duo; in that role, Jamil led all of the company’s strategic and technology partnership efforts, including developing go-to-market and technology integration plans with some of the largest cloud platforms and cybersecurity companies in the market, evaluating potential acquisition targets, and developing overall corporate strategy and thought leadership around collective security and collaborative defense in the cyber arena.
Prior to his time at IronNet, Jamil served on the leadership team of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as Chief Counsel and Senior Advisor under Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN), where he worked on key national security and foreign policy issues, including leading the drafting of the proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIS in 2014 and 2015, the AUMF against Syria in 2013, and revisions to the 9/11 AUMF against al Qaeda. Jamil was also the lead architect of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act and two sanctions laws against Russia for its first intervention in Ukraine.
Prior to joining SFRC, Jamil served as Senior Counsel to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) where he led the committee’s oversight of NSA surveillance, NRO intelligence issues, and NGA analytic and collection matters, as well as intelligence community-wide counterterrorism issues. Jamil was also the lead architect of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, the nation’s first cyber threat intelligence sharing legislation that was signed into law in 2015.
In the Bush Administration, Jamil served in the White House as an Associate Counsel to the President, handling Defense Department, State Department, and intelligence community matters, and serving as one of the White House Counsel’s primary representatives to the National Security Council Deputies Committee.
Prior to the White House, Jamil served on the leadership team of the Justice Department’s National Security Division as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, where he focused on counterterrorism and intelligence matters. At NSD, Jamil helped lead the division’s work on In re: Directives, the first ever two-party litigated matter in the FISA Court and the second case before the FISA Court of Review in its 30-year history. Jamil also led NSD’s efforts on the President’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), including the drafting of NSPD-54/HSPD-23, and related classified matters, and advised the National Security Agency (NSA) and U.S. Cyber Command’s predecessor organization, the Joint Function Component Command for Network Warfare (JFCC-NW), on matters related to cyber intelligence collection and offensive cyber activities. For his work on these matters, Jamil was awarded the Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Special Initiative and was among the group of lawyers awarded the Director of National Intelligence’s 2008 Legal Award (Team of the Year – Cyber Legal).
Jamil also served in other positions in the Justice Department, including in the Office of Legal Policy, where he worked on the confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to the United States Supreme Court.
Jamil also served as a lawyer in private practice at Kellogg Huber, a Washington, DC-based litigation boutique, as a policy advisor to Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and as a staff member or senior advisor on a number of political campaigns, including two presidential campaigns and a presidential transition team. While in law school, Jamil was a member of the University of Chicago Law Review, managing editor of the Chicago Journal of International Law, and National Symposium Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Following law school, Jamil served as a law clerk to Judge Edith H. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and, later in his career, as a law clerk to then-Judge Neil M. Gorsuch when he first joined the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit as well as a law clerk to Justice Neil Gorsuch when he joined the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jamil has published multiple op-eds and academic articles on national security, foreign policy, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, encryption, and intelligence matters, and is the co-author of a book chapter with former NSA Director Gen. (Ret.) Keith B. Alexander on national security and the press in National Security, Leaks, and the Freedom of the Press: The Pentagon Papers Fifty Years On (2021) and a book chapter with former CIA Director Gen. (ret.) Mike Hayden on ISIS, al Qaeda, and other international terrorist groups in Choosing to Lead: American Foreign Policy for a Disordered World (2015). Jamil has also written book chapters on cybersecurity and surveillance, as well as op-eds and policy papers with former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Matt Olsen, and Congressman Mike Waltz (R-FL), among others.
Jamil has previously taught graduate-level courses in intelligence law and policy at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and the National Intelligence University, served an outside advisor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, and has recently testified before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on China, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, and other national security matters. Jamil has also recently appeared on a range of national television and radio outlets including CNN, Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC, Bloomberg, PBS, Voice of America, and National Public Radio, and in various print and online publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the Washington Post on a range of national security matters including cybersecurity, counterterrorism, surveillance, encryption, privacy, and foreign policy issues.
Jamil holds degrees from UCLA (BA, cum laude), the University of Chicago Law School (JD, with honors), and the United States Naval War College (MA, with distinction).
Professor of Cyber Security and Policy, Tufts University
Susan Landau is Professor of Cyber Security and Policy in the Department of Computer Science, Tufts University. Earlier, as Bridge Professor of Cyber Security and Policy at the Fletcher School and School of Engineering, she founded Tufts's innovative MS degree in Cybersecurity and Public Policy. Prior to Tufts, Landau was Senior Staff Privacy Analyst at Google, Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, and faculty member at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Wesleyan University.
An interdisciplinary scholar, Landau works at the intersection of privacy, surveillance, cybersecurity, and the law. She has testified before Congress and briefed US and European policymakers on encryption, Landau and Whitfield Diffie won the McGannon Book Award for Social and Ethical Relevance in Communication Policy Research for Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption. She received the Surveillance Studies Book Prize for Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies, the USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award, shared with Steven Bellovin and Matt Blaze, and the American Mathematical Society's Bertrand Russell Prize. Landau has served on committees of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, on the National Science Foundation Computer and Information Science Engineering Advisory Board, the National Institute of Standards and Technology Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board, and on mathematics and computer science journal editorial boards. Landau received her BA from Princeton, MS from Cornell, and PhD from MIT.
Strategic Council, Silverado Policy Accelerator; former Republican Deputy Staff Director, U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Tara Caroselli McFeely is a senior national security executive with expertise spanning defense, intelligence, and technology policy, political, and budgetary domains. She serves on the Strategic Council at Silverado Policy Accelerator, advising on innovative, data-driven national security policy initiatives, and is an Adjunct Professor in the Master of Science in Foreign Service program at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.
In government, she most recently served as the Republican Deputy Staff Director on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) driving the national security and intelligence policy and Executive Branch oversight strategic direction. She also co-led the professional staff oversight functions of the policies and programs of the U.S. intelligence enterprise spanning six Departments: Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury, State; and two independent agencies: the Central Intelligence Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Prior to this role she served as the SSCI Budget Director, leading the staff oversight of the Intelligence Community (IC) and Defense Intelligence Enterprise annual $100.0+ billion budget and programs. Formerly, she was the SSCI Chairman’s Senior Advisor for Counterterrorism and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s intelligence programs.
In the research domain, Ms. McFeely was the Deputy Director of the Intelligence Analyses Division at the Institute for Defense Analyses. In this role she led a large team of senior social sciences and STEM researchers on complex multidisciplinary research and analysis projects.
At Booz Allen Hamilton, she was a senior advisor for multiple IC and Department of Defense clients. She also led numerous multifaceted contracts across the U.S. Government landscape globally, including multilateral counter-Biological Weapons (BW) program initiatives.
Ms. McFeely began her career serving globally in the U.S. Navy, initially as a Surface Warfare Officer conducting U.S. 2nd Fleet and NATO operations across the Atlantic, and subsequently as a Naval Intelligence Officer supporting operations in the Balkans and the Global War on Terror.
Ms. McFeely has a Bachelor of Science in Political Science from the U.S. Naval Academy where she was a letterwoman on the Women’s Varsity Basketball Team. She also has a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (MALD) from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
Shareholder & Co-Chair of the Workplace Policy Institute, Littler Mendelson P.C.
Alexander T. MacDonald advises employers on all aspects of the employment and labor landscape, focusing on emerging legislation and regulation. He has extensive experience advising businesses on worker classification, arbitration, the administrative and regulatory process, and the future of work. He frequently writes, publishes, and speaks on these subjects. His work has been cited by scholars and appellate courts. He is a recognized voice for the management perspective.
Alexander is a co-chair of the Workplace Policy Institute (WPI) team. With WPI, he advises employers on legislative, administrative, and regulatory developments at the state and federal level. He advocates for employers in the regulatory and administrative process. He also helps employers protect their businesses by understanding and anticipating cutting-edge legal developments.
Alexander also has extensive experience in traditional labor law. He represents management in all aspects of labor-management relations, including unfair labor practice charges, grievance arbitrations, representation elections, contract negotiations, and related litigation, including litigation in the U.S. courts of appeals.
Before joining Littler, Alexander served as the director, future of work, for a major technology company. He also worked in a national labor and employment law firm and a major public-sector general counsel’s office. He was a law clerk to the senior judges in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
He is also a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He served in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. In law school, he graduated first in his class
Senior Fellow; Senior Adviser, American Worker Project, Center for American Progress
David Madland is a senior fellow and the senior adviser to the American Worker Project at American Progress. He has been called “one of the nation’s wisest” labor scholars by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. His work “is creating a North Star for how we increase workers’ power in the economy and democracy,” according to Mary Kay Henry, former president of the Service Employees International Union.
Madland is the author of Re-Union: How Bold Labor Reforms Can Repair, Revitalize, and Reunite the United States (Cornell University Press, 2021), which helped put sectoral bargaining on the political agenda, and Hollowed Out: Why the Economy Doesn’t Work without a Strong Middle Class (University of California Press, 2015), a pioneering critique of trickle-down economics that has helped policymakers understand that the economy grows from the middle out and the bottom up, not from the top down.
He is frequently featured on television and radio programs, including appearances on PBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and NPR. His work has been cited in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker. He has testified before Congress as well as several state legislatures.
Madland received his doctorate in government from Georgetown University and his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley. His research about the decline of the U.S. pension system received the “Best Dissertation Award” from the Labor and Employment Relations Association. Madland previously worked on economic policy for Rep. George Miller (D-CA).
Vice President and Legal Director, National Right to Work Legal Defense and Education Foundation, Inc.
William Messenger is Foundation Vice President and Legal Director. He was a staff attorney for over twenty years and, during that time, represented individuals in numerous cases that sought to expand worker freedom of choice. This includes acting as lead counsel in three cases before the United States Supreme Court. In 2018, Messenger argued Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, where the Supreme Court held it violates the First Amendment for governments and unions to compel individuals to financially support unions and their speech. Originally from Youngstown Ohio, Messenger attended Ohio University as an undergraduate and then the George Washington University School of Law.
Former United States Ambassador to NATO, Former United States Senator, Texas
Kay Bailey Hutchison is a public servant and businesswoman who has served in roles from bank executive to U.S. Senator to most recently, U.S. Ambassador to NATO. She served as U.S. Senator from Texas from 1993 to 2013. In January 2021, she stepped down from a more than 3-year term as U.S. Ambassador to The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, Belgium where she worked to maintain U.S. leadership in the 30 Ally Alliance.
Kay Bailey Hutchison is a public servant and businesswoman who has served in roles from bank executive to U.S. Senator to most recently, U.S. Ambassador to NATO. She served as U.S. Senator from Texas from 1993 to 2013. In January 2021, she stepped down from a more than 3-year term as U.S. Ambassador to The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, Belgium where she worked to maintain U.S. leadership in the 30 Ally Alliance.
Kay has authored three books, including the bestselling American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country (2004), Leading Ladies: American Trailblazers (2007) and Unflinching Courage: Pioneering Women Who Shaped Texas (2013).
In 2013, the Dallas City Council honored her by naming the city’s convention center the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. Also in 2013, The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law and Business (KBH Energy Center) was created by the University of Texas to provide unique opportunities for business and law school students to learn the energy industry. The Center sponsors an annual symposium for leaders in the energy field to discuss current issues in the industry.
Kay serves on the Dallas Mayor’s International Advisory Council, UT Southwestern Medical Foundation Board of Trustees, and the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Council. She is a Senior Adviser at CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) and the NASA Advisory Council, in Washington DC. She also serves on the Bank of America Global Advisory Board.
Judicial Law Clerk, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida
Nitin is a recent graduate of Cornell Law School. Before his time in Ithaca, he majored in International Studies and Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and focused on power competition in South Asia during his graduate studies at the University of Oxford.
Robert V. Roosa Chair in International Economics, Senior Fellow – Economic Studies, Brookings Institution
Donald Kohn holds the Robert V. Roosa Chair in International Economics and is a senior fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. Kohn is a 40-year veteran of the Federal Reserve system, serving as member and then vice chair of the Board of Governors from 2002-2010. He also served as an external member of the Financial Policy Committee at the Bank of England from 2011-2021. Kohn is an expert on monetary policy, financial regulation, and macroeconomics and has written extensively on these issues. Prior to taking office as a member of the Board of Governors he served in a number of staff roles at the Board, including secretary of the Federal Open Market Committee (1987-2002) and director of the Division of Monetary Affairs (1987-2001). He has also served as chairman of the Committee on the Global Financial System (CGFS), a central bank panel that monitors and examines broad issues related to financial markets and systems. He advised Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke throughout the 2008-2009 financial crisis and served as a key adviser to former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. He was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award from The Money Marketeers of New York University (2002), lifetime achievement awards from The Clearing House (2012) and Central Banking magazine (2017), the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Wooster (1998), and the Honorary Degree, Doctor of Laws, from the College of Wooster (2006). In 2016, he was made honorary Commander of the British Empire. Kohn was born in November 1942 in Philadelphia. He received a B.A. in economics in 1964 from the College of Wooster and a Ph.D. in economics in 1971 from the University of Michigan. He is married and has two adult children and four grandchildren.
In addition to his Brookings position, Kohn serves on the board of Forbright Bank, consults on monetary policy for T. Rowe Price, chairs the Academic Advisory Committee at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and gives speeches to financial companies on the US economy and monetary policy under the aegis of the Washington Speakers Bureau.
U.S. House of Representatives, Oklahoma
Congressman Frank Lucas is a fifth generation Oklahoman whose family has lived and farmed in Oklahoma for over 120 years. Born on January 6, 1960 in Cheyenne, Oklahoma, Lucas graduated from Oklahoma State University in 1982 with a degree in Agricultural Economics. He was first elected to the United States House of Representatives in a special election in 1994.
Lucas proudly represents Oklahoma’s Third Congressional District, which includes all or portions of 32 counties in northern and western Oklahoma, stretching from the Oklahoma Panhandle to parts of Tulsa, and from Mustang to Altus in the southwest. It takes up almost half the state’s land mass and is one of the largest agricultural regions in the nation. Lucas has been a crusader for the American farmer since being elected to Congress in 1994 and he has fought to protect Oklahoma values.
Prior to his service in Congress, Lucas served for five and a half years in the Oklahoma State House of Representatives, where he fought to defend the rights of private property owners and focused on promoting agriculture issues.
Frank and his wife Lynda have three children and five grandchildren. The Lucas family belongs to the First Baptist Church in Cheyenne.
Partner, Mayer Brown
Andrew Olmem is a partner in Mayer Brown’s Washington DC office and a member of its Public Policy, Regulatory & Government Affairs, and Financial Services Regulatory & Enforcement practices. His practice focuses on complex financial services regulatory and public policy matters.
Andrew previously served as the Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council (NEC), where he oversaw the development and coordination of the administrations’ domestic economic policies, including for financial services, technology, telecom, energy, and infrastructure.
Earlier, he also served as the Republican Chief Counsel and Deputy Staff Director at the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. Andrew began his legal career practicing corporate and securities law at Mayer Brown in New York City. Prior to attending law school, he served as an Assistant Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
Senior Fellow, Mises Institute
Alex J. Pollock is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute, providing thought and policy leadership on financial issues and the study of financial systems. His work includes cycles of booms and busts, financial crises with their political responses, housing finance, government-sponsored enterprises, risk and uncertainty, central banking, banking and financial regulation, corporate governance, retirement finance, student loans, and the politics of finance.
He previously served as the Principal Deputy Director of the Office of Financial Research in the U.S. Treasury Department 2019-2021. He was a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the R Street Institute 2015-2019 and 2021, and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, 2004-2015. Among the many aspects of his AEI work, he developed the One Page Mortgage Form to give borrowers in clear form the key information they need in order to know what they are committing themselves to. He was President and CEO of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago from 1991 to 2004. There he invented the Mortgage Partnership Finance program, which successfully created front-end mortgage credit risk sharing beginning in 1997. His decades of banking experience include being a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 1991.
Pollock was a director of the CME Group 2004-2019 and of Ascendium Education Group 1989-2019. He is a director and past-chairman of the Great Books Foundation and a past president of the International Union for Housing Finance.
He is the co-author of Surprised Again! - The COVID Crisis and the New Market Bubble (2022), and the author of Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised (2018) and Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011), as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony.
Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University.
His work is available on alexjpollock.com.
Associate Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics; Co-Director, Wharton Initiative on Financial Policy and Regulation, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Christina Parajon Skinner is an expert on financial regulation. Her research focuses on central banking, the debt markets, separation of powers, corporate governance, and law and macroeconomics. Professor Skinner’s work is international and comparative in scope, drawing on her experience as an academic and central bank lawyer in the United Kingdom. Her research has been published or is forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, the Vanderbilt Law Review, and the Georgetown Law Journal, among other leading academic journals. Professor Skinner has also contributed to financial regulatory policy working groups, including those convened by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Financial Stability Board, and the U.K. Banking Standards Board.
Prior to joining the faculty at Wharton, Professor Skinner served as legal counsel at the Bank of England, in the Financial Stability Division of the Bank’s Legal Directorate. Her work there focused principally on matters of bank resolution, financial market infrastructure, and macroprudential policy. Previously, Professor Skinner was an Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Law and a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, Law Department. From 2014-2016, she was a post-doctoral fellow and lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School.
Professor Skinner received her J.D. from Yale Law School, and an A.B. from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, with a concentration in international economics. She received certificates of proficiency in European Politics and Society, and Spanish Language and Culture.
She is married with five children.
Professor of Computer Science & Director, Foundations of Cooperative AI Lab (FOCAL), Carnegie Mellon University
Vincent Conitzer is the Director of the Foundations of Cooperative AI Lab (FOCAL) and a Professor of Computer Science with affiliate appointments in Machine Learning and Philosophy. Prior to this he was the Kimberly J. Jenkins Distinguished University Professor of New Technologies and Professor of Computer Science, Professor of Economics, and Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. He is also Head of Technical AI Engagement at the Institute for Ethics in AI, and Professor of Computer Science and Philosophy, at the University of Oxford. He received Ph.D. (2006) and M.S. (2003) degrees in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and an A.B. (2001) degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University. Conitzer works on artificial intelligence (AI). Much of his work has focused on AI and game theory, for example designing algorithms for the optimal strategic placement of defensive resources. More recently, he has started to work on AI and ethics: how should we determine the objectives that AI systems pursue, when these objectives have complex effects on various stakeholders?
Conitzer has received the 2021 ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award, the Social Choice and Welfare Prize, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award, an NSF CAREER award, the inaugural Victor Lesser dissertation award, an honorable mention for the ACM dissertation award, and several awards for papers and service at the AAAI and AAMAS conferences. He has also been named a Guggenheim Fellow, a Sloan Fellow, a Kavli Fellow, a Bass Fellow, an ACM Fellow, a AAAI Fellow, and one of AI's Ten to Watch. He has served as program and/or general chair of the AAAI, AAMAS, AIES, COMSOC, and EC conferences. Conitzer and Preston McAfee were the founding Editors-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation (TEAC).
Senior Policy Counsel, Public Knowledge
Nicholas P. Garcia is a Senior Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge, focusing on emerging technologies, intellectual property, and closing the digital divide.
Before joining Public Knowledge, Nick served as an Assistant District Attorney in the Investigations Division of the Bronx County District Attorney’s Office, where he investigated and prosecuted cybercrime, fraud, grand larceny, and organized crime. He previously worked as a Legal Intern at Public Knowledge and as a Student Attorney for the Communications & Technology Law Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Public Representation.
Nick received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, his M.A. in Ethics and Society from Fordham University’s Center for Ethics Education, and his B.A. in cursu honorum in Philosophy from Fordham University, where he was a member of the Phi Sigma Tau Honor Society.
Nick is a native New Yorker, and an unabashed nerd who loves video games, science fiction, and tabletop RPGs.
President, Committee for Justice
Curt Levey is President of the Committee For Justice, an organization devoted to advancing constitutionally limited government and individual liberty. He is a veteran of Supreme Court and other judicial confirmation battles and serves on the executive committee of the Federalist Society's Civil Rights Practice Group.
After graduating Harvard Law School with honors and clerking for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Mr. Levey served as Director of Legal & Public Affairs at the Center for Individual Rights (CIR). There he worked on landmark Supreme Court cases, including the University of Michigan affirmative action cases and the successful constitutional challenge to the Violence Against Women Act. After CIR, Mr. Levey headed the Title IX policy group at the U.S. Department of Education.
Before attending law school, Mr. Levey earned an M.S. and B.A. in computer science from Brown University and worked in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). He invented a new type of AI technology, for which he wrote a successful patent application.
Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law
Hon. Kenneth L. Marcus is an internationally recognized expert in civil and human rights, as well as a leader in the fight against anti-Semitism on and off university campuses. He is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the leading civil rights legal organization fighting against anti-Semitism. The New York Times has called him “The Man Who Helped Redefine Campus Anti-Semitism.” He been described, in that paper, as “the single most effective and respected force” to combat anti-Semitism.
During his public service career, Marcus served as Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education for Civil Rights; Staff Director at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; and General Deputy Assistant U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity.
In academia, he serves as Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University. He formerly held the Lillie and Nathan Ackerman Chair in Equality and Justice in America at the City University of New York’s Bernard M. Baruch College, served as Visiting Research Professor of Political Science at Yeshiva University, and was a Board of Visitors member George Mason University and Distinguished Senior Fellow at that university’s law school. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism and previously served as Associate Editor of the Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism.
Marcus is also author of The Definition of Anti-Semitism (Oxford University Press) and Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America (Cambridge University Press). He has published widely in academic journals as well as in more popular venues such as The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsweek, USA Today, and Politico. He is a graduate of Williams College and the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.
Earlier in his career, he was a litigation partner in two major law firms, where he conducted complex commercial and constitutional litigation. He also serves as Chairman emeritus of the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Civil Rights Practice Group.
Partner, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
Michael Edney defends executives and corporations in criminal prosecutions and agency enforcement actions, successfully challenging numerous regulatory agencies—from the Justice Department to the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, among others—against federal government overreach. Many of the regulations Mike has convinced the courts to reverse would have arbitrarily ended hundreds of businesses absent the courts’ intervention. He has also successfully challenged government decisions to break contracts and end projects in cooperation with private industry.
In addition to his criminal defense practice, Mike regularly brings actions challenging government agency regulations as illegal and unconstitutional before they are enforced. He has sued government agencies and reversed their attempted regulations seeking to upend the energy, financial, and tobacco industries.
His civil litigation practice spans beyond anti-regulatory suits. He has brought some of the leading First Amendment cases in the country. On behalf of The Washington Free Beacon, he vindicated the publication’s First Amendment right to access sealed court records before the Arizona Supreme Court. He has defended corporations in bet-the-company litigation concerning securities, environmental, employment, and fair housing. He has represented states at the request of their governors. He has repeatedly served as counsel for former Attorneys General of the United States when they appear as amici curiae before the Supreme Court.
Mike also represents clients on numerous national security matters, including the Classified Information Procedures Act, the Foreign Agent Registration Act, matters before the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, government cybersecurity investigations into companies regarded as critical national infrastructure, the handling of classified information by government contractors, and prepublication review of books authored by former government officials for sensitive and classified information.
His private practice draws from a half decade of prior government service. During the administration of former President George W. Bush, he served as deputy legal advisor to the National Security Council at the White House and in the Office of Legal Counsel at the United States Department of Justice, where he helped the administration address many legal issues pertaining to the United States' post-9/11 campaign against terrorism.
Before joining Morgan Lewis, Mike was a litigation partner at another global law firm.
General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, Aristotle International
The Honorable David M. Mason is General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Aristotle. He assists campaigns, PACs, and political parties in maximizing their effectiveness while complying with federal and state regulatory requirements.
Mr. Mason served as Commissioner and Chairman (2002 and 2008) of the Federal Election Commission from 1998 until 2008, a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed position.
President Reagan appointed Mason as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Legislative Affairs) where he was instrumental in working with Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci and Representative Dick Armey in securing passage of base closing legislation.
Commissioner Mason has testified before Congress over 20 times, addressed international conferences on elections and appeared in or wrote for scores of American print and broadcast media outlets. He is an honors graduate of Claremont McKenna College in Government, graduated with highest honors from Concord Law School and is a member of the California Bar.
Deputy General Counsel, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board
Connor Raso serves as acting deputy general counsel at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. He is a contributor to the Brookings' Series on Regulatory Process and Perspective as part of the Brookings Center on Regulation and Markets.
From 2014-2022 Mr. Raso Served as Special Senior Counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Russell G. Ryan, a former assistant director of enforcement at the SEC, is now Senior Litigation Counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance.
Partner, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
Michael Edney defends executives and corporations in criminal prosecutions and agency enforcement actions, successfully challenging numerous regulatory agencies—from the Justice Department to the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, among others—against federal government overreach. Many of the regulations Mike has convinced the courts to reverse would have arbitrarily ended hundreds of businesses absent the courts’ intervention. He has also successfully challenged government decisions to break contracts and end projects in cooperation with private industry.
In addition to his criminal defense practice, Mike regularly brings actions challenging government agency regulations as illegal and unconstitutional before they are enforced. He has sued government agencies and reversed their attempted regulations seeking to upend the energy, financial, and tobacco industries.
His civil litigation practice spans beyond anti-regulatory suits. He has brought some of the leading First Amendment cases in the country. On behalf of The Washington Free Beacon, he vindicated the publication’s First Amendment right to access sealed court records before the Arizona Supreme Court. He has defended corporations in bet-the-company litigation concerning securities, environmental, employment, and fair housing. He has represented states at the request of their governors. He has repeatedly served as counsel for former Attorneys General of the United States when they appear as amici curiae before the Supreme Court.
Mike also represents clients on numerous national security matters, including the Classified Information Procedures Act, the Foreign Agent Registration Act, matters before the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, government cybersecurity investigations into companies regarded as critical national infrastructure, the handling of classified information by government contractors, and prepublication review of books authored by former government officials for sensitive and classified information.
His private practice draws from a half decade of prior government service. During the administration of former President George W. Bush, he served as deputy legal advisor to the National Security Council at the White House and in the Office of Legal Counsel at the United States Department of Justice, where he helped the administration address many legal issues pertaining to the United States' post-9/11 campaign against terrorism.
Before joining Morgan Lewis, Mike was a litigation partner at another global law firm.
General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, Aristotle International
The Honorable David M. Mason is General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Aristotle. He assists campaigns, PACs, and political parties in maximizing their effectiveness while complying with federal and state regulatory requirements.
Mr. Mason served as Commissioner and Chairman (2002 and 2008) of the Federal Election Commission from 1998 until 2008, a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed position.
President Reagan appointed Mason as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Legislative Affairs) where he was instrumental in working with Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci and Representative Dick Armey in securing passage of base closing legislation.
Commissioner Mason has testified before Congress over 20 times, addressed international conferences on elections and appeared in or wrote for scores of American print and broadcast media outlets. He is an honors graduate of Claremont McKenna College in Government, graduated with highest honors from Concord Law School and is a member of the California Bar.
Deputy General Counsel, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board
Connor Raso serves as acting deputy general counsel at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. He is a contributor to the Brookings' Series on Regulatory Process and Perspective as part of the Brookings Center on Regulation and Markets.
From 2014-2022 Mr. Raso Served as Special Senior Counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Russell G. Ryan, a former assistant director of enforcement at the SEC, is now Senior Litigation Counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance.
Professor, School of Civic Leadership, University of Texas, Austin
Yonatan Green, an Israeli-American attorney, is a Professor at the School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas, Austin, where he also serves as Director of The Ackerman Program on Jewish and Western Civilization. He is the author of the acclaimed book Rogue Justice: The Rise of Judicial Supremacy in Israel (Academica Press, 2025). He was previously a Fellow at the Georgetown University Center for the Constitution. Yonatan is co-founder and former Executive Director of the Jerusalem-based Israel Law & Liberty Forum, a project of the Tikvah Fund inspired by the Federalist Society. He holds a degree in Law and Communications from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Partner, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
Michael Edney defends executives and corporations in criminal prosecutions and agency enforcement actions, successfully challenging numerous regulatory agencies—from the Justice Department to the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, among others—against federal government overreach. Many of the regulations Mike has convinced the courts to reverse would have arbitrarily ended hundreds of businesses absent the courts’ intervention. He has also successfully challenged government decisions to break contracts and end projects in cooperation with private industry.
In addition to his criminal defense practice, Mike regularly brings actions challenging government agency regulations as illegal and unconstitutional before they are enforced. He has sued government agencies and reversed their attempted regulations seeking to upend the energy, financial, and tobacco industries.
His civil litigation practice spans beyond anti-regulatory suits. He has brought some of the leading First Amendment cases in the country. On behalf of The Washington Free Beacon, he vindicated the publication’s First Amendment right to access sealed court records before the Arizona Supreme Court. He has defended corporations in bet-the-company litigation concerning securities, environmental, employment, and fair housing. He has represented states at the request of their governors. He has repeatedly served as counsel for former Attorneys General of the United States when they appear as amici curiae before the Supreme Court.
Mike also represents clients on numerous national security matters, including the Classified Information Procedures Act, the Foreign Agent Registration Act, matters before the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, government cybersecurity investigations into companies regarded as critical national infrastructure, the handling of classified information by government contractors, and prepublication review of books authored by former government officials for sensitive and classified information.
His private practice draws from a half decade of prior government service. During the administration of former President George W. Bush, he served as deputy legal advisor to the National Security Council at the White House and in the Office of Legal Counsel at the United States Department of Justice, where he helped the administration address many legal issues pertaining to the United States' post-9/11 campaign against terrorism.
Before joining Morgan Lewis, Mike was a litigation partner at another global law firm.
General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, Aristotle International
The Honorable David M. Mason is General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Aristotle. He assists campaigns, PACs, and political parties in maximizing their effectiveness while complying with federal and state regulatory requirements.
Mr. Mason served as Commissioner and Chairman (2002 and 2008) of the Federal Election Commission from 1998 until 2008, a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed position.
President Reagan appointed Mason as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Legislative Affairs) where he was instrumental in working with Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci and Representative Dick Armey in securing passage of base closing legislation.
Commissioner Mason has testified before Congress over 20 times, addressed international conferences on elections and appeared in or wrote for scores of American print and broadcast media outlets. He is an honors graduate of Claremont McKenna College in Government, graduated with highest honors from Concord Law School and is a member of the California Bar.
Deputy General Counsel, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board
Connor Raso serves as acting deputy general counsel at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. He is a contributor to the Brookings' Series on Regulatory Process and Perspective as part of the Brookings Center on Regulation and Markets.
From 2014-2022 Mr. Raso Served as Special Senior Counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Russell G. Ryan, a former assistant director of enforcement at the SEC, is now Senior Litigation Counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance.
DeMuth Chair of Business Law, University of Colorado Law School
Andrew A. Schwartz joined the Colorado Law faculty in 2008 and was promoted to full professor in 2017. He teaches and publishes on corporate, securities and contract law, and has become an internationally recognized expert on investment crowdfunding. In 2017, Professor Schwartz served as a Fulbright Research Scholar and visiting professor at the University of Auckland Law School in New Zealand.
Professor Schwartz earned an Sc.B. in Civil Engineering from Brown University and a J.D. from Columbia University, where he served on the Columbia Law Review and was named a James Kent Scholar (top honors) all three years. Before entering academia, he clerked for Judge William A. Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Following his clerkships, Professor Schwartz practiced corporate law in New York at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
Professor Schwartz is the author of one book, Investment Crowdfunding, forthcoming from the Oxford University Press, as well as more than forty scholarly publications. His major articles have appeared in leading flagship law reviews including the UCLA Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, and Notre Dame Law Review, top specialty journals such as the Yale Journal on Regulation and Harvard Business Law Review, and peer-reviewed journals like the New Zealand Law Review.
Professor Schwartz has won numerous national awards for his scholarship, including the AALS Scholarly Paper Competition and the Federalist Society Young Legal Scholars Paper Competition. At Colorado Law, Professor Schwartz has received the Provost's Award for Faculty Achievement, the Gilbert Goldstein Faculty Fellowship, and the Outstanding New Faculty Award. His research is frequently cited and relied upon by courts and commentators across the country and around the world, including numerous citations by the Delaware Court of Chancery, the nation's leading venue for corporate law.
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Discussing Clarke v. CFTC: The Case of PredictIt & the CFTC's No-Action Letter
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The Peculiar Case of the Israeli Legal System
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The Israeli legal system often draws a great deal of confused and excited attention from...
Investment Crowdfunding Book Talk
Colorado Lawyers Chapter
Denver, CO