Director of Law & Policy, Environmental Integrity Project
Following Princeton and the University of Chicago Law School, David began practicing law at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Eventually tiring of litigation where the result was a wire transfer from Entity A to Entity B, in the early 1990’s David began his environmental law career at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. Since then, he has litigated dozens of cases under all of the major environmental statutes including, as Sierra Club’s Chief Climate Counsel, initiating and managing Massachusetts v. EPA. Most recently, he has been busy challenging FERC’s permitting of natural gas pipelines and LNG export terminals. Apart from litigation, David has helped lead efforts on both greenhouse gas regulation and global warming legislation (and may be the only person ever invited to testify by both Barbara Boxer and James Inhofe).
He has drafted a range of federal climate legislation, advised states as to their greenhouse gas regulatory authority (and for many years has represented environmental groups defending state GHG regulations from dormant Commerce Clause challenges). David has designed and taught courses on “Environmental Litigation” at Georgetown University Law Center and “Environmental Law and Science” at the William and Mary Law School/Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit
John K. Bush is a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. His chambers are in Louisville, Kentucky. Prior to joining the court, Judge Bush was a partner in the Louisville office of Bingham Greenebaum Doll LLP, where he also was co-chair of the firm’s litigation department. He began his legal practice in the Washington, D.C. office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP.
Judge Bush served as a law clerk for Judge J. Smith Henley of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. He was graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt University in 1986, and cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1989.
United States Attorney, Eastern District of California
Mr. Grant was appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi to serve as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of California beginning on August 11, 2025. Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 546(d), he was further appointed by the district court effective December 9, 2025.
Mr. Grant is a veteran of the Department of Justice, having served twice in Washington, D.C.: from 1991 to 1993 as an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of Legal Counsel, and from 2017 to 2021 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD). During his tenure at ENRD, he supervised more than a hundred Department litigators advancing the interests of the United States and its agencies in both enforcement and defensive matters, both civil and criminal.
In addition to his service in the Department, Mr. Grant has decades of experience in private practice in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento. That experience includes arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, and numerous other federal and state courts.
Mr. Grant served as a law clerk to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (retired) and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas during the Supreme Court’s October 1994 Term. Earlier he served as a law clerk to Judge Edith H. Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Houston, Texas.
Mr. Grant grew up in Modesto, California and raised his family in Sacramento County. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, from which he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics (1986) and a law degree (1990).
Emeritus Dean and Professor of Law, Lewis & Clark Law School
Professor Huffman joined the law school faculty in 1973, was appointed Acting Dean in 1993 and Dean in 1994, and returned to full time teaching in 2006. Born in Fort Benton, Montana, Jim graduated from Montana State University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and the University of Chicago Law School. He has been a visiting professor at Auckland University in New Zealand, the University of Oregon, the University of Athens in Greece and Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala. He was also a fellow at the Humane Studies Institute and a Distinguished Bradley Scholar at the Heritage Foundation. Jim serves on the boards of the National Crime Victims Law Institute, the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, the Classroom Law Project, and the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation. He is a member and former Chair of the Executive Committee of the Environment and Property Rights Practice Group of the Federalist Society. He is a member of the Montana Bar Association and is admitted to practice before the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the United States Supreme Court. He is the author of more than 100 articles and chapters on a wide array of legal topics.
Senior Fellow, Ave Maria School of Law and Host of the Four Boxes Diner Second Amendment Channel
Mark W. Smith is Visiting Fellow in Pharmaceutical Public Policy and Law in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford; Presidential Scholar and a Senior Fellow in Law and Public Policy at The King’s College; and Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow of Law and Public Policy at the Ave Maria School of Law.
He is a constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner YouTube channel—which provides scholarly and historical analyses of the Second Amendment. Mark is also a New York Times bestselling author.
Founder, Libertas-West Project
Karen Lugo is a constitutional law consultant and national security analyst. She was Director of the Center for Tenth Amendment at Texas Public Policy Foundation from 2013 to 2015. When living in California, she was Co-Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence Center. From 2005 – 2012, she was a clinical visiting and adjunct professor at Chapman University School of Law where she co-taught the advanced Constitutional Law Clinic. Karen has co-authored and written circuit-level and Supreme Court amicus briefs on such issues as FISA Surveillance, Healthcare Reform, Arizona’s Border Security, Gay Marriage, The Ten Commandments, Eminent Domain, Christian Clubs on University Campuses, and Material Support for Terrorists.
Karen is the founder of the Libertas-West Project, a center for study Islamic integration and radicalization issues. In this capacity, she consulted with the Center for Security Policy to write a book on local over-watch of mosque construction and community engagement called: Mosques in America: A Guide to Accountable Permit Hearings and Continuing Citizen Oversight.
Karen writes and speaks for European and American groups on the importance of basing assimilation efforts on principles of Western exceptionalism. She presented a policy brief to the French Conseil d’Etat analyzing the legal implications of banning the burqa. Ms. Lugo has written one of the most comprehensive overviews of sharia law in American courts, American Family Law and Sharia-Compliant Marriages, for the Federalist Society law journal, Engage. She has written several white papers on the American Law for American Courts legislation and sharia tribunals in America.
Ms. Lugo was an appointee to the California Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She also taught a Human Rights law course on the contrast between French and English Enlightenment theories in Strasbourg, France.
Until moving from California, Ms. Lugo was a member of the David Horowitz Freedom Center Board of Directors. She was also a regular guest on the Orange County PBS local issues debate program, Inside OC, and she is a contributor to Pajamas Media, National Review Online, City Journal, American Spectator, American Greatness, Townhall.com, American Thinker, Daily Caller, and Family Security Matters. She has been interviewed by dozens of radio hosts and has spoken for civic groups on constitutional and cultural concerns.
Acting Assistant Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Office of Professional Responsibility, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Brian M. Fish is currently the Senior Advisor to the General Counsel at the Department of Homeland Security where he works on immigration and law enforcement issues. Previously, he was a trial attorney with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he represented the Department of Homeland Security in removal hearings before the U.S. Immigration Court. Additionally, he was a Special Assistant United States Attorney and a Baltimore City homicide prosecutor. He is a member of the Federalist Society's Criminal Law & Procedure Practice Group Executive Committee and the President of its Baltimore Lawyers Chapter. He earned his B.A. from LaSalle University in 1992 and his J.D. from Loyola University New Orleans School of Law in 1998.
Director of Litigation, Immigration Reform Law Institute
Mr. Hajec joined the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) in 2017 as its Director of Litigation, and is responsible for overseeing IRLI’s public interest litigation. Previously, he has focused his career on constitutional and other civil rights law in the public interest, and has had an abiding concern about the many adverse effects of illegal and excessive legal immigration on American jobs and communities.
At IRLI, in addition to representing plaintiffs in immigration-related civil lawsuits, he has overseen the drafting and filing of nearly 100 briefs, mostly amicus curiae briefs in defense of the Trump administration’s immigration initiatives, which have been subjected to an unprecedented degree of legal assault by well-funded interest groups.
Prior to joining IRLI, Mr. Hajec was an attorney at the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), where he litigated a string of high-profile cases, including the defense of videographer James O’Keefe in suits brought by former ACORN employees, a class action suit on behalf of Asian American students discriminated against by the New York City public schools, and a case that resulted in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s striking down Texas’s psychologists licensing statute as an overbroad restriction on free speech.
Before CIR, Mr. Hajec was an officer in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he served as a defense counsel before courts-martial and then as Appellate Government Counsel, arguing over 100 appeals before the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. He received the Navy Commendation Medal for his legal work, and also because of his poor handling of an emergency during a hurricane.
He received his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and his undergraduate degree, cum laude, from the University of Michigan. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Miami, and studied philosophy and sociology at Oxford University.
Partner, Klasko Immigration Law Partners, LLP
William A. Stock (Bill) is one of the country’s leading immigration lawyers. A founding member of Klasko Immigration Law Partners, LLP, he has practiced immigration law exclusively for over twenty years. His clients include small businesses, medium sized companies, and multinational corporations and their employees, as well as individual clients, investors and researchers.
Bill leads a team of thirty-two attorneys, senior and junior paralegals in obtaining employment-based immigration benefits for clients, such as nonimmigrant visa classification (H-1B, L-1, E-1 and E-2, TN and O-1); permanent residence or “green card” status through Labor Certification or as immigrants of Exceptional or Extraordinary Ability (EB-1, EB-2 and EB-3); investment-based immigration (EB-5); and unusual or complicated matters such as physician J-1 waivers, visas for entrepreneurs, and mandamus or APA review actions brought in federal court.
Bill served as President of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), the 16,000 member national organization of immigration lawyers in 2017. He has long been active in the association on both a national and state level and has served several terms on the Association’s Board of Governors. In 2000, he received the Association’s Joseph Minsky Award for outstanding accomplishments in immigration law.
Bill is a Senior Editor of AILA’s annual Immigration & Nationality Law Handbook, and is the co-author of the “J Visa Guidebook” from Lexis Publishing. He was an Adjunct Professor at the Villanova University School of Law. He has been included since 2004 in Best Lawyers in America (Woodward/ White Inc.); since 2006 in Chambers Global: The World’s Leading Lawyers for Business (Chambers and Partners), Who’s Who in American Law, and The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers. Bill is also featured as a 20 top practitioner in the area of Immigration Law by Lawdragon.
A summa cum laude graduate of the University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, MN), (B.A.1990), he received his law degree from the University of Minnesota (J.D., magna cum laude, 1993) where he was a member of the Order of the Coif.
Professor of Law and Executive Director, Law and Economics Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University
Donald Kochan is Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Law & Economics Center (LEC). Professor Kochan is an elected member of the American Law Institute (ALI) and serves as an Adviser to ALI's Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property project. Professor Kochan is a Nonresident Scholar at the Center for the Constitution at Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a Visiting Scholar in residence during Fall 2018. Before joining the Antonin Scalia Law School faculty, he was the Parker S. Kennedy Professor in Law at Chapman University’s Dale E. Fowler School of Law from 2004 to 2020. From 2003 to 2004, Professor Kochan was an Olin Fellow at the University of Virginia School of Law. During 2002-2003, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason’s Scalia Law School.
Professor Kochan’s scholarship focuses on areas of property law, constitutional law, administrative law, local government law, natural resources and environmental law, and law & economics. He has published several books and more than 50 scholarly articles and essays in well-regarded law journals. His work has been cited in more than a dozen state and federal court opinions, in more than 75 briefs filed in state and federal courts including more than 25 filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, in dozens of books and treatises, and in more than 800 scholarly articles.
Professor Kochan received his JD from Cornell Law School, where he was a John M. Olin Scholar in Law and Economics and managing editor of the Cornell International Law Journal. During law school, he also served as editor and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy symposium issues in 1997 and 1998. He received his BA from Western Michigan University, magna cum laude, with majors in both political science and philosophy, where he studied as the John W. Gill Medallion Scholar and was honored as the Presidential Scholar (awarded to the top graduate in the political science department).
After graduating from law school, Professor Kochan was a law clerk to The Honorable Richard F. Suhrheinrich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Following his clerkship, Professor Kochan was an associate with the firm of Crowell & Moring LLP in Washington, D.C., where he specialized in natural resources & environmental law as well as tort, products, and consumer civil litigation & legislative affairs.
Senior Attorney, Pacific Legal Foundation
Christina Martin is a Senior Attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation where she leads its initiative to end home equity theft—predatory tax-foreclosure laws that allow the government to take valuable homes and all equity in those homes as payment for debts as small as $8.
Christina's victories as lead counsel include Tyler v. Hennepin County in the U.S. Supreme Court, Hall v. Meisner in the Sixth Circuit, Rafaeli, LLC v. Oakland County in the Michigan Supreme Court, and New Mexico Farm & Livestock Bureau v. U.S. Department of the Interior in the Tenth Circuit. She also served as second chair in Knick v. Township of Scott, a landmark Supreme Court case that opened up the federal courthouse doors to takings plaintiffs.
Christina is admitted to the state bars of Washington, Oregon, and Florida, as well as a number of federal courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Physics and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication from the University of Washington. She earned her J.D. from Ave Maria School of Law, where she was an editor of the Ave Maria Law Review.
Chief Legal Officer, Paradigm
Manager of Tech and Innovation, Charles Koch Institute
Jesse Blumenthal manages the Technology & Innovation work of the Charles Koch Institute, focusing on emerging technology issues, digital free speech, and industries ripe for innovation.
The Charles Koch Institute and Charles Koch Foundation work to foster a national conversation on critical issues that have a strong impact on the advancement of societal well-being.
Senior Director, Government Affairs, Consumer Technology Association
Jamie Boone is the senior director of government affairs for the Consumer Technology Association, serving as an advocate for the consumer technology industry on Capitol Hill. Her core areas of policy expertise include self-driving vehicles and vehicle technology, privacy, and drones. She is a passionate thought leader on public policy for automated and connected vehicles, and has spoken at CES, SXSW, and on various policy panels across the DC area. Jamie is an experienced legislative and policy professional, having previously served as a longtime aide for Congressman Bill Shuster, last acting as his deputy chief of staff. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Women’s High Tech Coalition. Jamie earned a Bachelor of Arts from Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania before moving to Washington, D.C., where she currently lives with her husband.
Program Officer, Madison Initiative, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Jean Parvin Bordewich is a Program Officer for the Madison Initiative at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. She manages a portfolio of grants related to strengthening U.S. democracy, with a particular emphasis on the institution of Congress.
Previously, Jean spent over 20 years as a congressional staff member. Before joining Hewlett in 2014, she served for more than five years as staff director of the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, the committee most involved in the administration of the Senate and oversight of legislative branch agencies. In that capacity, she worked on campaign finance disclosure legislation, a new law to broaden access to voting for military and overseas voters, Senate rules and regulations including filibuster reform, improving election administration, streamlining the process for confirmation of Presidential nominations, Senate operations and administration, and oversight for the Federal Election Commission and the Election Assistance Commission. She also served as staff director of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, which was responsible for all 2013 Presidential Inaugural events at the U.S. Capitol.
Earlier in her career, Jean was elected to three terms as a councilwoman in New York’s Hudson Valley, ran for Congress in 1998, was a delegate to two national Presidential nominating conventions, and served as chief of staff and campaign director for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. She also has worked as a writer and editor for magazines and newspapers, and as a business executive. Since 2014, Jean has written and produced two plays in the Washington, D.C. Capital Fringe Festival, including a political drama about McCarthyism in the U.S. Senate.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in classics from Brown University and a master’s degree in business administration from The George Washington University.
Head of AI Policy, Abundance Institute
Neil Chilson is the Head of AI Policy at the Abundance Institute. Prior to this position, he served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity. Chilson is a lawyer, computer scientist, and author of the book “Getting Out of Control: Emergent Leadership in a Complex World.”
Chilson was previously the senior research fellow for Technology and Innovation at Stand Together, where he guided efforts to understand and promote the legal and cultural paradigms that best enable people to discover, innovate, and improve all our lives.
Before Stand Together, Chilson was the Chief Technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, where he focused on the economics of privacy and blockchain-related issues. Previously, he was an attorney advisor to Acting FTC Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen. In both roles he advised Chairman Ohlhausen and worked with staff on nearly every major technology-related case, report, workshop, or other FTC proceeding since January 2014. Neil joined the FTC from telecom firm Wilkinson Barker Knauer. Neil is frequently quoted by the press and his work has appeared in numerous news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USAToday, and Newsweek. Neil has a J.D. from The George Washington Law School, a M.S. in computer science from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a B.S. in computer science from Harding University.
Advisor on Policy, Data for Democracy
Renée has a decade of experience in technological, marketing, and business capacities in a variety of industries including supply chain logistics, venture capital, and derivatives trading. She has served as an advisor to the State Department, Congress, and other state and federal government institutions concerned with the spread of disinformation and propaganda.
Non-resident Distinguished Senior Fellow, Technology & Innovation, R Street Institute
Mike Godwin focuses his research and writing on the areas of patent and copyright reform, surveillance reform, technology policy, freedom of expression and global internet policy.
He previously served as a senior policy advisor at Internews, advising the organization’s public-policy partners in developing and transitional democracies as part of the Global Internet Policy Project.
Mike also served as general counsel for the California-based Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia and other collaborative projects. There, he created and directed anti-censorship, privacy, trademark and copyright strategies and policies including Wikimedia’s responses to the SOPA and PIPA initiatives.
Prior to that, Godwin was the first staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which he advised on a range of legal issues centered on freedom of expression and privacy rights during the accelerating growth of Internet access in the United States. His continuing career as an Internet-law thought leader has included a policy fellowship at the Center for Democracy and Technology and a research fellowship at Yale Law School.
Early in his career, he served as a reporter and later editor-in-chief of The Daily Texan. He is also a contributing editor at Reason magazine and is the originator of the widely cited “Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies,” which, in 2012, was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Godwin received his bachelor’s and juris doctor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Professor of Law and Co-Director, High Tech Law Institute, Santa Clara University School of Law
Eric Goldman is a Professor of Law, and Co-Director of the High Tech Law Institute, at Santa Clara University School of Law. Before he became a full-time academic in 2002, he practiced Internet law for 8 years in the Silicon Valley. His research and teaching focuses on Internet, IP and advertising law topics, and he blogs on these topics at the Technology & Marketing Law Blog [http://blog.ericgoldman.org]. Managing IP magazine has twice named him to a shortlist of North American “IP Thought Leaders,” and he has been named an “IP Vanguard” by the California State Bar’s IP Section.
Head of Policy, Lincoln Network
Zach Graves is head of policy at the Lincoln Network, a nonprofit that helps bridge the gap between Silicon Valley and DC. Previously, Zach was technology policy program director at the R Street Institute, where he remains an associate fellow. Prior to R Street, Zach worked at the Cato Institute and the America’s Future Foundation. He is also a fellow at the Internet Law and Policy Foundry.
He holds a master’s from the California Institute of the Arts and a bachelor’s from the University of California at Davis.
Zach is married and lives in Washington.
Program Manager, Academic & Student Programs, Mercatus Center, George Mason University
Anne Hobson is a Program Manager for Academic & Student Programs at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She is currently an associate fellow of technology policy at the R Street Institute and a 2017-2019 Internet Law & Policy Foundry fellow. Prior to that, Anne was a Public Policy Associate at Facebook. She is currently pursuing a PhD in economics from George Mason University and is an alum of the Mercatus Center MA Fellowship at George Mason University. She continues to focus on policy issues associated with emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and cybersecurity. She received her B.A. in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University.
Co-Founder & Executive Director, Lincoln Network
Garrett is the Co-founder & Executive Director of Lincoln, a network where liberty and technology meet.
Garrett is the former CEO/co-founder of SendHub, a venture-backed startup based in Silicon Valley. He previously served as professional staff on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where his oversight portfolio included Afghanistan, Pakistan and Haiti.
Johnson was graduated magna cum laude in three years with a double major in Political Science and English. Johnson was named an academic All-American in 2005 and 2006 and earned the Florida State Golden Torch Award given to the FSU student-athlete with the highest GPA.
Johnson completed graduate studies at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and was accepted to Harvard law school. Originally from Florida, he took his undergraduate degrees from Florida State University where he was also a two time NCAA track champion.
Former President, National Religious Broadcasters
Dr. Jerry A. Johnson is the former President of the National Religious Broadcasters. He became president of NRB on November 1, 2013, succeeding Dr. Frank Wright. Before accepting that post, he was President of Criswell College, and former Dean of Academics at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also held several positions during 14 years at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. From 2013-2014 he served as Chairman of the Nominating Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Fellow, Beeck Center, Georgetown University
Lorelei Kelly is an expert on building inclusive and informed democratic systems. She leads the Resilient Democracy Coalition (RDC) and is based at the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation at Georgetown University. The coalition assesses how data, technology and new engagement methods can help build a more resilient democracy, specifically focused on Congress.
Lorelei used to lead the Smart Congress initiative with the Open Technology Institute at New America. She was also at the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. A civil-military expert, she has spent a decade leading “Security for a New Century” a bipartisan study group in the House and Senate. Lorelei has worked with hundreds of women candidates across the USA—creating and communicating national security platforms that reflect the needs of a rapidly changing world. She attended Grinnell College, Stanford University and the Air Command and Staff College of the US Air Force. She has co-authored two books and numerous articles. Please see the list of her publications.
Chief Technology Officer of the United States, Office of Science and Technology Policy
Michael Kratsios advises President Donald J. Trump on a broad range of technology policy issues and drives United States technology priorities and strategic initiatives.
Michael has had an integral role in the development and execution of the Trump Administration’s national technology policy agenda since inauguration. Under his leadership, the White House launched initiatives in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, 5G and broadband communications, autonomous vehicles, commercial drones, STEM education, and advanced manufacturing.
Michael encourages the development of emerging technologies in the United States, empowers American companies to commercialize and adopt new technologies, and improves and expands access to the tools necessary for Americans to succeed in the 21st century economy. He is also responsible for aligning the development of new technologies with the Administration’s priorities, including standing up for the American worker, defending American innovations abroad, and protecting the safety and security of the American people.
Michael has represented the United States as the Head of Delegation at multiple international fora, including G7 Technology Ministerials in Italy, Canada, and France; G20 Digital Economy Ministerials in Argentina and Japan; and the OECD Ministerial Council Meeting in Paris. Prior to joining the White House, Michael was a Principal at Thiel Capital. Michael graduated from Princeton University and served as a Visiting Scholar at Beijing’s Tsinghua University.
On August 1, 2019, the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Michael as the fourth Chief Technology Officer of the United States.
President and Founder, International Center for Law & Economics
Geoffrey A. Manne is the president and founder of the International Center for Law and Economics (ICLE), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center based in Portland, Oregon. He is also a distinguished fellow at Northwestern Law School’s Searle Center on Law, Regulation, & Economic Growth. In April 2017 he was appointed by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee, and he recently served for two years on the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee.
Mr. Manne earned his JD and AB degrees from the University of Chicago and is an expert in the economic analysis of law, specializing in competition, telecommunications, consumer protection, intellectual property, and technology policy.
Prior to founding ICLE, Manne was a law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School. From 2006-2009, he took a leave from teaching to develop Microsoft’s law and economics academic outreach program. Manne has also served as a lecturer in law at the University of Chicago Law School and the University of Virginia School of Law. He practiced antitrust law and appellate litigation at Latham & Watkins, clerked for Hon. Morris S. Arnold on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, and worked as a research assistant for Judge Richard Posner. He was also once (very briefly) employed by the FTC.
Mr. Manne’s publications have appeared in numerous journals including the Journal of Competition Law and Economics, the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, the Supreme Court Economic Review, and the Arizona Law Review, among others. With former FTC Commissioner, Joshua Wright, Manne is the editor of a volume from Cambridge University Press entitled, Competition Policy and Intellectual Property Law Under Uncertainty: Regulating Innovation. Manne has also testified on several occasions before Congress and at the FCC and FTC, and he regularly files written comments and amicus briefs on key antitrust, IP, and telecommunications issues. His analysis is frequently published in popular print and broadcasting outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Foreign Affairs, NPR, and Bloomberg, among others.
Manne is a member of the American Law and Economics Association, the Canadian Law and Economics Association, and the Society for Institutional & Organizational Economics. He blogs at Truth on the Market (www.truthonthemarket.com) (of which he is also the co-founder), is a contributor at WIRED, and tweets at @geoffmanne. His scholarly publications are available at http://ssrn.com/author=175541.
Founding Partner, Floodgate Capital
Mike Maples, Jr is a Partner at Floodgate. He has been on the Forbes Midas List since 2010 and was also named one of “8 Rising Stars” by FORTUNE Magazine. Before becoming a full-time investor, Mike was involved as a founder and operating executive at back-to-back startup IPOs, including Tivoli Systems (IPO TIVS, acquired by IBM) and Motive (IPO MOTV, acquired by Alcatel-Lucent.)
Some of Mike’s investments include Twitter, Twitch.tv, ngmoco, Weebly, Chegg, Bazaarvoice, Spiceworks, Okta, and Demandforce.
Mike is known for coining the term “Thunder Lizards,” which is a metaphor derived from Godzilla that describes the tiny number of truly exceptional companies that are wildly disruptive capitalist mutations. Mike likes to think of himself as a hunter of the “atomic eggs” that beget these companies.
General Partner, Bullpen Capital
Paul is the founder of four companies including Ahpah Software (a computer security firm acquired by InterTrust); Tribe (one of the world’s first social networks), and Aggregate Knowledge (a big data advertising attribution company acquired in 2014 by Neustar). Paul’s early online gaming innovations in multi-player user experience from almost 20 years ago are the inspiration for several of the modern social gaming offerings. He is the holder of over a dozen core patents covering social networking and big data.
Prior to forming Bullpen, he was an active angel investor and personally invested in the first rounds of Zynga, TubeMogul, and uDemy. Paul founded Bullpen in 2010 and has led several of its key investments including FanDuel, Namely, Ipsy, SpotHero, Classy, and Airmap. Paul holds a BS in Mathematics from Lehigh University and a Masters in Computer Science from Princeton University.
Federal Affairs Manager & Executive Director for Digital Liberty, Americans for Tax Reform
Katie McAuliffe is Federal Affairs Manager at Americans for Tax Reform and Executive Director of Digital Liberty. She focuses her research and advocacy efforts on telecom/technology issues, such as spectrum allocation, internet taxation, electronic communications privacy reform, and tech/telecomm reform. In the telecom field she has experience from not only the legislative side, but the industry perspective as well. Before staffing Congressman Cliff Stearns' (R-Fla.) DC office in various capacities (Staff Assistant/Legislative Correspondent and Budget Legislative Assistant) she spent time as a radio station professional in the US and abroad. Her commentary has been published in The Hill, U.S News & World Report, Townhall.com and The Daily Caller. She received her Master of Mass Communications with a Telecommunications Policy focus from the University of Florida and her B.A. from Virginia Tech.
Legal Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Corynne McSherry is the Legal Director at EFF, specializing in intellectual property, open access, and free speech issues. Her favorite cases involve defending online fair use, political expression, and the public domain against the assault of copyright maximalists. As a litigator, she has represented Professor Lawrence Lessig, Public.Resource.Org, the Yes Men, and a dancing baby, among others, and one of her first cases at EFF was In re Sony BMG CD Technologies Litigation (aka the "rootkit" case). In 2015 she was named one of California's Top Entertainment Lawyers. She was also named AmLaw's "Litigator of the Week" for her work on Lenz v. Universal. Her policy work includes leading EFF’s effort to fix copyright (including the successful effort to shut down the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA), promote net neutrality, and promote best practices for online expression. In 2014, she testified before Congress about problems with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Corynne comments regularly on digital rights issues and has been quoted in a variety of outlets, including NPR, CBS News, Fox News, the New York Times, Billboard, the Wall Street Journal, and Rolling Stone.
Prior to joining EFF, Corynne was a civil litigator at the law firm of Bingham McCutchen, LLP. Corynne has a B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz, a Ph.D from the University of California at San Diego, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. While in law school, Corynne published Who Owns Academic Work?: Battling for Control of Intellectual Property (Harvard University Press, 2001).
Senior Vice President, Political and Industry Affairs, Consumer Technology Association
Tiffany M. Moore serves as senior vice president of political and industry affairs for the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)™. Promoted to the newly created position in 2018, Moore’s expanded role includes overseeing CTA’s U.S. jobs, and diversity and inclusion initiatives. In addition, she leads the association’s advocacy efforts on Capitol Hill on issues including communications and technology policy, patent litigation reform, strategic immigration reform and international trade, and overseeing CTA’s political action committee CTAPAC. Moore joined CTA as vice president of government and political affairs in 2015.
Before joining CTA, she served as principal of Moore Consulting and strategic consultant with TwinLogic Strategies. In these roles, Moore advised corporations, trade associations, and coalitions on how to influence technology and innovation policy before Congress and the administration.
Moore’s career in Washington, DC spans 20 years where she has served in a variety of roles including stints as a senior advisor to Congress, a corporate government relations executive, a political appointee at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and a strategic consultant to tech and telecom companies and trade associations.
A proud native of Detroit, MI, Moore earned her master’s degree in international affairs from George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, and her bachelor’s degree from Western Michigan University.
Founder and Director, TechCongress
Travis Moore was the Legislative Director for Rep. Henry A. Waxman, the former Chairman and Ranking Member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, who had jurisdiction over wide-ranging matters of technology policymaking. Travis has launched a number of programs to build human capital and improve technological capacity inside and outside of Congress including:
Travis is the Co-Founder of Congress Too, a group of 1500 former Congressional staffers that brought the #MeToo movement to Capitol Hill and spearheaded a reform overhaul signed into law in late 2018.
Travis' work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Re/code, Politico, The Hill, Roll Call and other outlets. He can be reached at Travis [at] TechCongress.io or @travismoore.
Founder and Executive Director, Code for America
Jennifer Pahlka is the founder and executive director of Code for America. She served as the U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2013–2014, where she architected and helped found the United States Digital Service. She currently serves on the Defense Innovation Board in her personal capacity. She is known for her TED talk, Coding a Better Government, and is the recipient of several awards, including the National Democratic Institute’s Democracy Award and being named by Wired as one of the 25 people who has most shaped the past 25 years. She previously ran the Game Developers Conference, Game Developer magazine, Gamasutra.com, and the Independent Games Festival, followed by the Web 2.0 and Gov 2.0 events. She is a graduate of Yale University and lives in Oakland, California with her daughter, husband, and seven chickens.
Assistant Professor of Economics, SUNY-Purchase College
Liya Palagashvili’s research is broadly in law and economics, political economy, development economics, regulation, and entrepreneurship. She has written on topics relating to labor regulations, entrepreneurship, foreign aid agency rankings and aid effectiveness, self-governing communities, culture and transitional economies in Eastern Europe, federalism, and community policing. Currently, she is conducting interviews with tech entrepreneurs and creating a unique survey to examine early tech start-ups and the regulatory framework in their industries, as well as co-authoring a book that analyzes the policies in response to the 2008 financial crisis.
Liya is also the Law and Economics Fellow with the Classical Liberal Institute at New York University School of Law and a Senior Fellow with the Fraser Institute. She earned her PhD in economics from George Mason University in 2015, and while in graduate school, she was also a Visiting PhD Fellow with the Department of Economics at New York University.
She has published in academic journals such as the History of Political Economy, Journal of Institutional Economics, Supreme Court Economic Review, and the Journal of Law, Economics, and Policy, among others. Liya has also published in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, MSN, Yahoo Finance, U.S. News and World Report, and Orange County Register, among others.
In 2016, Liya was named one of the Forbes “30 under 30” in Law & Policy.
Director, Public Policy, Mozilla
Chris Riley is the Director of Public Policy at Mozilla, working to advance the open internet through public policy analysis and advocacy, strategic planning, coalition building, and community engagement. Chris manages the global Mozilla public policy team and its active engagements in Washington, Brussels, New Delhi, and around the world. Chris works on all things internet policy, motivated by the belief that an open, disruptive internet delivers tremendous socioeconomic benefits, and that if we as a global society don't work to protect and preserve the internet's core features, those benefits will go away. The internet ecosystem isn't perfect - but we have to be smart in how we address its problems while continuing to invest in its strengths. Getting internet policy right is crucial for that future.
Prior to joining Mozilla, Chris worked as a program manager at the U.S. Department of State on Internet freedom, a policy counsel with the non-profit public interest organization Free Press, and an attorney-advisor at the Federal Communications Commission. Chris holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University, where he worked as a research and teaching assistant and an instructor, and a J.D. from Yale Law School, taking internships at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the law firm Ropes & Gray. He has published scholarship on topics including innovation policy, cognitive framing, graph drawing, and distributed load balancing.
Executive Director, Mercatus Center, George Mason University
Dan Rothschild is the Executive Director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He leads strategy and oversees all programs and operations for the organization.
Prior to serving in this role at Mercatus, Mr. Rothschild was director of state projects and a senior fellow with the R Street Institute. He joined R Street in October 2013 after two years as the first-ever director of external affairs and coalitions at the American Enterprise Institute. Previously, he spent six years in a variety of policy, communications, and project management positions at the Mercatus Center. He has worked extensively with think tanks throughout the country.
His popular writing and articles and reviews have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Reason, Weekly Standard, Roll Call, The Hill, Chicago Policy Review, Economic Affairs, and many other popular and policy publications. He was a 2012-13 National Review Institute Washington fellow. Dan has testified before the U.S. Congress and several state legislatures on tax and fiscal policy, government reform, and disaster recovery policy.
Rothschild has a bachelor’s degree from Grinnell College, a master’s degree from the University of Manchester, and a master’s degree in public policy from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.
Vice President, Glen Echo Group
As Vice President at Glen Echo Group, Ellen Satterwhite helps clients formulate policy positions and tell their stories with good one-liners backed by solid data. As a co-author of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, Consumer Policy Advisor to the Commission and freelance consultant, her work has been written about in Huffington Post, AllThingsD, CNet, Geekwire, GigaOm and CivSource. Previously, Ellen served as Program Director for Gig.U, supporting communities seeking gigabit speeds.
Satterwhite earned a Master’s in Public Affairs from UT Austin and a BA from Grinnell College. She believes brevity is the soul of wit and someone should tell that to YouTube commenters.
Policy Director, Demand Progress
Daniel leads Demand Progress and Demand Progress Education Fund’s efforts on issues that concern governmental transparency/accountability/reform, civil liberties/national security, and promoting an open internet.
He co-founded the Congressional Data Coalition, which brings together organizations from across the political spectrum to advocate for a tech-savvy Congress. Daniel directs the Advisory Committee on Transparency, which supports the work of the Congressional Transparency Caucus, and is a fellow at CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics. His new website, EveryCRSReport, recently won a ‘le hackie’ award from D.C. Legal Hackers.
In 2016 Daniel was named to the FastCase 50 and in 2013 Daniel was named among the 'top 25 most influential people under 40 in gov and tech' by FedScoop. He is a nationally recognized expert on federal transparency, accountability, and capacity and has testified before Congress and appeared on NPR, C-SPAN, and other news outlets.
He previously worked as policy director at CREW; policy counsel at the Sunlight Foundation; and as a legislative attorney with the Congressional Research Service. Daniel graduated cum laude from Emory University School of Law.
Managing Director, Econ One
Hal Singer is an expert in antitrust, consumer protection, and regulation. He has researched, published, and testified on competition-related issues in a wide variety of industries, including media, pharmaceuticals, sports, and finance. He has extensive experience providing expert economic and policy advice to regulatory agencies in the United States and Canada, as well as before congressional committees.
Dr. Singer is also a Senior Fellow at the George Washington Institute of Public Policy and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business, where he teaches advanced pricing to MBA candidates. In 2018, the American Antitrust Institute honored Dr. Singer with an antitrust enforcement award for his work in the Lidoderm antitrust litigation.
Chairman, Anduril Industries and Partner, Founders Fund
Trae Stephens is Co-Founder and Chairman of Anduril Industries, and additionally a Partner at Founders Fund.
Trae was a senior in high school on 9/11 and was inspired to attend Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service focusing on Arabic and Security Studies, later serving as a computational linguist building enterprise solutions to Arabic/Persian name matching and data enrichment within the United States Intelligence Community.
After his time in the Intelligence Community, Trae joined as an early employee at Palantir Technologies, where he led teams focused on growth in the intelligence/defense space as well as international expansion, helping large organizations solve their hardest data analysis problems. He was also an integral part of the product team, leading the design and strategy for new product offerings. He simultaneously served as an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University.
Trae has also served in the office of then Congressman Rob Portman and in the Political Affairs Office at the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, D.C. immediately following the installation of Hamid Karzai’s transitional government.
Director of Research, American Economic Liberties Project
Matt Stoller is a public intellectual who writes about the American anti-monopoly
tradition. He is the author of the Simon and Schuster book Goliath: The Hundred Year
War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. Stoller is the Director of Research at
the American Economic Liberties Project. He publishes an email newsletter called BIG.
Stoller is a former policy advisor to the Senate Budget Committee, and worked in the House of Representatives on the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform Act.
He has lectured on competition policy and media at Columbia University, Harvard Law, Duke Law, Bertelsmann Foundation, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, West Point and the National Communications Commission of Taiwan. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fast Company, Foreign Policy, the Guardian, Vice, The American Conservative, and the Baffler.
He has also produced for MSNBC and starred in a short-lived television show on FX called Brand X with Russell Brand.
President, TechFreedom
Berin Szoka serves as President of TechFreedom. Previously, he was a Senior Fellow and the Director of the Center for Internet Freedom at The Progress & Freedom Foundation. Before joining PFF, he was an Associate in the Communications Practice Group at Latham & Watkins LLP, where he advised clients on regulations affecting the Internet and telecommunications industries. Before joining Latham's Communications Practice Group, Szoka practiced at Lawler Metzger Milkman & Keeney, LLC, a boutique telecommunications law firm in Washington, and clerked for the Hon. H. Dale Cook, Senior U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Oklahoma. Szoka received his Bachelor's degree in economics from Duke University and his juris doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as Submissions Editor of the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology. He is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and California (inactive).
Senior Fellow, R Street Institute
Prior to R Street, Adam spent 12 years as a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Before the Mercatus Center, he served as the president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Adam has also worked for the Adam Smith Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.
Adam has published 10 books on a wide range of topics, including online child safety, internet governance, intellectual property, telecommunications policy, media regulation and federalism.
In 2008, Adam received the Family Online Safety Institute’s “Award for Outstanding Achievement.”
Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Institute for Progress
Caleb Watney is the co-founder and co-CEO of the Institute for Progress.
Caleb manages the metascience and immigration policy teams at IFP. His research focuses on policy levers the U.S. could use to rebuild state capacity and increase long-term rates of innovation.
Previously, Caleb worked as the director of innovation policy at the Progressive Policy Insitute, a technology policy fellow at the R Street Institute, and a graduate research fellow at the Mercatus Center. His commentary has been published in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Politico, Lawfare, and the National Review. He has also been cited in the New York Times, The Economist, Vox, Ars Technica, and the National Journal. He received his master’s in economics from George Mason University and a bachelor of business administration from Sterling College.
Acting Assistant Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Office of Professional Responsibility, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Brian M. Fish is currently the Senior Advisor to the General Counsel at the Department of Homeland Security where he works on immigration and law enforcement issues. Previously, he was a trial attorney with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he represented the Department of Homeland Security in removal hearings before the U.S. Immigration Court. Additionally, he was a Special Assistant United States Attorney and a Baltimore City homicide prosecutor. He is a member of the Federalist Society's Criminal Law & Procedure Practice Group Executive Committee and the President of its Baltimore Lawyers Chapter. He earned his B.A. from LaSalle University in 1992 and his J.D. from Loyola University New Orleans School of Law in 1998.
Director of Litigation, Immigration Reform Law Institute
Mr. Hajec joined the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) in 2017 as its Director of Litigation, and is responsible for overseeing IRLI’s public interest litigation. Previously, he has focused his career on constitutional and other civil rights law in the public interest, and has had an abiding concern about the many adverse effects of illegal and excessive legal immigration on American jobs and communities.
At IRLI, in addition to representing plaintiffs in immigration-related civil lawsuits, he has overseen the drafting and filing of nearly 100 briefs, mostly amicus curiae briefs in defense of the Trump administration’s immigration initiatives, which have been subjected to an unprecedented degree of legal assault by well-funded interest groups.
Prior to joining IRLI, Mr. Hajec was an attorney at the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), where he litigated a string of high-profile cases, including the defense of videographer James O’Keefe in suits brought by former ACORN employees, a class action suit on behalf of Asian American students discriminated against by the New York City public schools, and a case that resulted in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s striking down Texas’s psychologists licensing statute as an overbroad restriction on free speech.
Before CIR, Mr. Hajec was an officer in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he served as a defense counsel before courts-martial and then as Appellate Government Counsel, arguing over 100 appeals before the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. He received the Navy Commendation Medal for his legal work, and also because of his poor handling of an emergency during a hurricane.
He received his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and his undergraduate degree, cum laude, from the University of Michigan. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Miami, and studied philosophy and sociology at Oxford University.
Partner, Klasko Immigration Law Partners, LLP
William A. Stock (Bill) is one of the country’s leading immigration lawyers. A founding member of Klasko Immigration Law Partners, LLP, he has practiced immigration law exclusively for over twenty years. His clients include small businesses, medium sized companies, and multinational corporations and their employees, as well as individual clients, investors and researchers.
Bill leads a team of thirty-two attorneys, senior and junior paralegals in obtaining employment-based immigration benefits for clients, such as nonimmigrant visa classification (H-1B, L-1, E-1 and E-2, TN and O-1); permanent residence or “green card” status through Labor Certification or as immigrants of Exceptional or Extraordinary Ability (EB-1, EB-2 and EB-3); investment-based immigration (EB-5); and unusual or complicated matters such as physician J-1 waivers, visas for entrepreneurs, and mandamus or APA review actions brought in federal court.
Bill served as President of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), the 16,000 member national organization of immigration lawyers in 2017. He has long been active in the association on both a national and state level and has served several terms on the Association’s Board of Governors. In 2000, he received the Association’s Joseph Minsky Award for outstanding accomplishments in immigration law.
Bill is a Senior Editor of AILA’s annual Immigration & Nationality Law Handbook, and is the co-author of the “J Visa Guidebook” from Lexis Publishing. He was an Adjunct Professor at the Villanova University School of Law. He has been included since 2004 in Best Lawyers in America (Woodward/ White Inc.); since 2006 in Chambers Global: The World’s Leading Lawyers for Business (Chambers and Partners), Who’s Who in American Law, and The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers. Bill is also featured as a 20 top practitioner in the area of Immigration Law by Lawdragon.
A summa cum laude graduate of the University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, MN), (B.A.1990), he received his law degree from the University of Minnesota (J.D., magna cum laude, 1993) where he was a member of the Order of the Coif.
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