Two Think Minimum

Blair Levin is currently a nonresident fellow with the Brookings Institution and a policy advisor at New Street. Blair’s worked for the past 25 years at a high level at the intersection of broadband policy and capital markets. And most importantly for the purpose of this conversation, he led the FCC’s national broadband plan back in 2009 to 2010.

Kelcee Griffis is a Washington, D.C.-based reporter covering the telecommunications industry for Law360, a legal trade wire read by some of the most powerful law firms and government agencies. Her reporting takes her to the Federal Communications Commission, K Street law firms, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon and even the White House as she writes about policy and legislation affecting the media industry. She’s worked on stories on the fight over net neutrality regulations, telecommunication lobbying interests in the Trump administration, the future of 5G mobile technology, the failed Sinclair-Tribune merger and the pending Sprint-T-Mobile merger.

Bruce Mehlman is the founder of Mehlman, Castagnetti, Rosen and Thomas, a government relations firm here in DC. Prior to that he was assistant secretary of commerce for technology policy in the George W. Bush administration and he's kind of an all around smart guy. He has very smart things to say about technology, technology trends, technology policy, the interplay with politics and a lot of it in a global context.

Ambassador Koh is U.S. Representative and Head of Delegation to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) World Radio Communication (WRC) Conference 2019. She's also Special Advisor for International Communications and Information Policy in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs. If you think that's not enough, before joining the State Department in 2019, she was a partner in DLA Piper’s telecommunications groups, served as Special Assistant to the President for Technology, Telecom and Cybersecurity Policy at the National Economic Council, Deputy Chief Counsel to the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology in the U.S. House of Representatives, policy counsel for Cox enterprises, and even more, she has a BA from Yale University and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Brent Skorup is a lawyer and Senior Research Fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His research areas include telecommunications, transportation, technology regulation, and wireless policy. He serves on the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee and is the Vice Chair of the Competitive Access subcommittee. He has authored pieces in a wide variety of outlets and has appeared on different news outlets as well. Eli Dourado is an economist and recently served as Head of Global Policy and Communications at Boom Supersonic, and before that, as a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He has written on a wide range of technology policy issues including internet governance, intellectual property, cybersecurity and cryptocurrency. His focus on aviation innovation includes topics such as commercial drones, supersonic flight, and flying cars. His popular writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and other outlets, and he was formally an advisor to the State Department on international telecommunication matters.

Executive editor of Communications Daily and telecom reporter extraordinare Jonathan Make joins Scott Wallsten and Sarah Oh in a discussion of the top telecom stories of 2019, including Julius Knapp's retirement, broadband mapping, net neutrality, federalism, and 5G.

Doug Smith is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Ligado Networks and is responsible for directing the vision of the company and managing every aspect of its day to day operations. With more than 25 years of domestic and international telecom and wireless industry experience, Doug has engineered, built and launched nationwide networks for GTE, Nextel, Sprint Nextel and Clearwire. Valerie Green is Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer of Ligado Networks and is responsible for the company's legal public affairs and regulatory activities. Prior to joining Ligado, Valerie served in the Obama Administration as Assistant to the President and Director of Presidential Personnel. She also served in the White House as Deputy Special Counsel to the President and Special Assistant to the President and she started her career as a litigator with several prominent law firms.

Bryan Tramont is Managing Partner of Wilkinson Barker Knauer, a top tier law firm according to Chambers and Legal 500 Bryan offers strategic counsel to Fortune 100 companies, trade associations, small and midsize telecommunications and media companies, on all aspects of communications, law and regulation. Bryan has also served as Chief of Staff and Senior Legal Advisor for FCC Chairman Michael Powell. His other top level FCC gigs have included at Senior Legal Advisor to Commissioners Kathleen Abernathy and Harold Furchtgott-Roth. He's been recognized as one of the nation's top communications lawyers. If there's a list he's on it, including 2016 Lawyer of the Year in Communications law and the top 10 Washington DC Super Lawyer, 2017 Lawyer of the year in media law, was named in 2017 to be Inaugural Legal 500 Hall of Fame, and Lawyer of the Year in 2020 edition of Best Lawyers in America, which is amazing cause it's not even 2020 yet. So, and although there's no award for it, Bryan is also known throughout the telecom world regardless of your economic or political leanings or company you work for or represent, as not just a super insider, unmatched knowledge, but also the friendliest, most helpful and most honest person around.

Judith Mariscal is a professor at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) and Executive Director of the Cyber Policy Center for Latin America. She's a leading telecommunications scholar and easily the most knowledgeable and thoughtful person on telecom in Mexico. For the last few years we've seen lots of big changes, not just in politics in Mexico, but in the telecommunications sector and one of the biggest issues that possibly has broader lessons for the rest of the world is the story of Red Compartida, the wholesale network, where the government provided a 90 MHz block to the 700 MHz spectrum band and awarded build out to a company. It's been hugely controversial. Judith helps explain what's happening.

Catherine Tucker is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management and a Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan. She is also Chair of the MIT Sloan PhD Program. Her research interests lie in how technology allows firms to use digital data and machine learning to improve performance, and in the challenges this poses for regulation. Tucker has particular expertise in online advertising, digital health, social media, and electronic privacy. Her research studies the interface between marketing, the economics of technology, and law. Disclosure Statement: https://mitmgmtfaculty.mit.edu/cetucker/disclosure/. Professor Tucker’s disclosure statement lists companies she has consulted for, grants she has received, relationships with academics working at a variety of firms, and entities in which she has a significant financial interest. The statement follows the guidelines set out by MIT, American Economic Review, and NBER.