Board

Board of Directors

Virginia Lam Abrams

Founder, Berkeley Place Strategies

Virginia Lam Abrams is a seasoned communications and public affairs executive with more than 15 years experience working in technology, media, and politics. She is founder of Berkeley Place Strategies, where she works with public and private technology companies to shape their communications strategies. She also serves as Senior Vice President of Communications and Government Relations at Project Decibel, a startup focused on developing next generation technology to improve Internet connectivity and enrich the consumer experience.

Most recently, Virginia served as Senior Vice President of Communications and Government Relations at Aereo, where she spent three years guiding the company’s communications, advocacy, and lobbying efforts. Prior to joining Aereo, Virginia was Senior Vice President of Public Affairs at Rubenstein Communications, where she managed a portfolio of clients spanning the media, technology, and real estate industries. Prior to joining Rubenstein, she served as a deputy press secretary to New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg during his second term, where she led communications for the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition and managed a portfolio of city agencies including the NYPD, FDNY, Department of Education, and Law Department. In 2010, Virginia served as deputy campaign manager and communications director for the Republican nominee for NYS Attorney General, Dan Donovan.

Virginia holds a bachelor's of science in journalism and political science from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She also serves on the advisory board of Engine.

Leah Belsky

Leah Belsky VP of Strategic Development and Associate General Counsel, Kaltura

Leah Belsky is a serial entrepreneur and thought leader who specializes in open systems and application of technology to new domains. She is the VP of Strategic Development and Associate General Counsel at Kaltura, a "TechCrunch Top 40" and Intel Capital funded company launching the world's first open source media platform. At Kaltura, Leah drives product and business strategy, interfacing with Fortune 100 companies and educational institutions to define the future of education and media on the web.

Leah began her career in international development and science & technology policy at the World Bank, National Institutes of Health, Madeline Albright Group, and Electronic Frontier Foundation. At the Bank she received the "Innovation Fund Award" and led public-private development and democratization projects in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. She was also a member of Obama's Technology Policy Committee and an early advisor to 'Startl', an edtech incubator and accelerator in NYC.

Leah is a graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University. At Yale, she was a Knight Law and Media Fellow and studied innovation, community design, and open systems under Yochai Benkler. She also launched Noank Media, a spin-off start-up of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, with Terry Fisher, a leading intellectual property scholar and one of the largest Telcos in China. Leah's work has been published in leading academic journals, and she has presented around the world. She remains a fellow at Yale, a leader of the Open Video Alliance, and advises both start-ups and non-profits focused in education and cultivation of entrepreneurial communities in the US.

Moses Boyd

Founding Partner of Integrated Solutions Group

Moses is a Founding Partner of Integrated Solutions Group (ISG) with more than 20 years of experience in the Washington policy arena.

Moses’ Washington career began in 1989 as Consumer Affairs Counsel to the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation (U.S. Senate Commerce Committee). In 1992 he was named Senior Consumer Affairs Counsel, and in 1999 he became Democratic Chief Counsel to the full Committee.

Moses began his Government Affairs practice in 2004 and has represented businesses and organizations across the alternative energy, communications, and technology sectors. In 2006, he co-founded the Integrated Solutions Group. Moses is also a Founding Partner of the United States Renewable Energy Group (USREG), a private equity fund committed to integrating renewable and environmentally sound energy technologies into the American marketplace.

In 2007, Moses helped form the Access to Capital Coalition (ACC), a national business alliance of small and middle market businesses, minority-owned and women-owned private equity firms, and entrepreneurs.

Prior to his tenure with the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, Moses practiced law in the state of South Carolina. He received his BA in 1983 and JD in 1986 from the University of South Carolina. In 2000, he completed Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government's Senior Executive Management Program for Public Managers.

Hal Bringman

Hal Bringman Founder and President, NVPR

Hal Bringman is a communications strategist with a demonstrated 15-year track record of using his media expertise to build solid business opportunities around trends detected in their most nascent stages.

Hal has been a key player in many of technology's most seminal events, including the unleashing of digital distribution in the entertainment industry propelled by the launch of MP3.com and Napster. Beginning in 2000, he followed up this advent by ushering in the rise of mobile technology by launching and shaping the earliest mobile entertainment companies.

He helped to further foster the evolutionary forces in the entertainment industry by launching TV and film related startups that have caused a stir in the corridors of both Hollywood and Washington, DC alike, with strategic outreach to both policymakers and the public. Even now, while copyright conglomerates ponder their future, Hal continues to help drive the pulse of innovation.

Before the masses became familiar with the terminology or Steve Jobs figured out what an MP3 file was, Hal launched MP3.com as his company's first client in 1998. He simultaneously introduced digital music to the marketplace by leading the high-profile rise of the company from inception through IPO. According to Credit Suisse, it was their single largest independent Internet IPO, raising nearly $400 million in a single day. Hal has been instrumental as a communications and strategy advisor in raising more than $3 billion from various methods, including IPO, venture capital, and acquisitions.

Most recently, Hal recognized Double Down Interactive's (DDI) massive market potential and joined this venture to help it reach the next level in the already crowded social games space. With his intuitive vision and strategic outreach, Hal helped build the startup into the fourth most popular social game on Facebook in only one year, and then he introduced DDI to market-leader, IGT, leading to the acquisition of DDI for $500 million in January 2012.

Hal Bringman is the founder and President of NVPR, a digital media consultancy based in Seattle, with offices in Los Angeles and Buenos Aires. The firm consults companies with multi-billion dollar market caps, investment banks, and select start-ups alike, helping them reach the masses, accelerate business development, and ultimately realize successful exit strategies.

The acumen and instincts to successfully drill down and detect trend findings, look deeper at consumer needs, locate any sense of friction, and subsequently help to create solutions—all with an entrepreneurial mindset – drives Hal Bringman's work.

Michael Copps

Special Adviser to the Media and Democracy Reform Initiative at Common Cause

Michael J. Copps completed two terms as a Member of the Federal Communications Commission on December 31, 2011. He is the seventh longest serving Commissioner in the history of the agency. Commissioners are nominated by the President of the United States and are confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Dr. Copps served from 1998 until January 2001 as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Trade Development at the U.S. Department of Commerce. In that role, Assistant Secretary Copps managed a 400-person team working to improve market access and market share for nearly every sector of American industry, including information technologies and telecommunications. He Copps devoted much of his time to building private sector-public sector partnerships to enhance the U.S.'s success in the global economy. From 1993 to 1998, Dr. Copps served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Basic Industries, a component of the Trade Development Unit.

Dr. Copps moved to Washington in 1970 to join the staff of U.S. Senator Ernest F. Hollings (D-SC) and served for over a dozen years as the Senator's Chief of Staff and senior adviser. From 1985 to 1989, Copps served as Director of Government Affairs for a Fortune 500 Company. From 1989 to 1993, he was Senior Vice President for Legislative Affairs for a major national trade association.

A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Copps received a B.A. from Wofford College and earned a Ph.D. in United States history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He taught U.S. history at Loyola University in New Orleans from 1967 to 1970.

Commissioner Copps' years at the FCC were highlighted by his strong defense of "the public interest"; outreach to what he calls "non-traditional stakeholders" in the decisions of the Commission—particularly minorities, Native Americans, and the various disabilities communities; and by actions to stem the tide of what he regards as excessive consolidation in the nation's media and telecommunications industries.

Dr. Copps has made clear his intention to continue speaking out on these issues in the years ahead. He currently serves as Special Adviser to the Media and Democracy Reform Initiative at Common Cause

Copps is married to the former Elizabeth Catherine Miller of New Orleans. They have five children and six grandchildren, and reside in Alexandria, VA.

Maura Colleton Corbett, Board Chair

Maura Corbett President and Founder, Glen Echo Group

Maura Colleton Corbett is the CEO and Founder of the Glen Echo Group, with over two decades of communications, media, public affairs, and coalition building experience with companies and organizations building the New Economy.

Corbett provides strategic counsel to clients faced with complicated issues particularly within the high-technology industry, including Internet competition, wireless technologies, broadband deployment, and applications and content-related policy issues such as privacy, security, and copyright.

A proud New Jersey native, Corbett graduated from the University of Notre Dame and used to moonlight as the lead singer in a band. She is the mother of two marvelous daughters and one neurotic dog.

Laurent Crenshaw

Director of Federal Public Policy, Yelp

Laurent Crenshaw is the head of Federal Public Policy for Yelp in Washington, DC. At Yelp he has championed the company’s federal efforts to protect consumer freedom of speech on the Internet, and worked to implement Yelp as a tool for the federal government.

Prior to joining Yelp in 2013, Laurent worked in the House of Representatives for over 11 years. During his tenure he served as the Legislative Director for Representative Darrell Issa, focusing on technology policy issues, particularly in the areas of intellectual property, telecommunications, and Internet law. He also worked in the offices of the House Majority Whip and House Republican Conference. Laurent successfully worked on numerous legislative efforts including the passage of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act in 2011 and the fight to defeat SOPA and PIPA in Congress.

Laurent obtained his undergraduate degree in International Relations from Stanford University in 2002 and his Juris Doctor degree from American University's Washington College of Law in 2010.

Brewster Kahle

Brewster Kahle Digital Librarian, Director and Co-founder, Internet Archive

Brewster has built technologies, companies, and institutions to advance the goal of universal access to all knowledge. He currently oversees the non-profit Internet Archive as founder and Digital Librarian, which is now one of the largest digital archives in the world.

As a digital archivist, Brewster has been active in technology, business, and law.

After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982, Brewster helped start a supercomputer company, Thinking Machines, that built systems for searching large text collections. In 1989, he invented the Internet's first publishing and distributed search system, WAIS (Wide Area Information Server). WAIS Inc. created the online presence for many of the world's largest publishers, and was purchased by America Online in 1995. In 1996, Brewster co-founded Alexa Internet, which provides search and discovery services included in more than 90 percent of web browsers, and was purchased by Amazon in 1999.

Brewster has also worked to revise law and policy in light technical advances. He is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a plaintiff in Kahle v. Gonzales (formerly Kahle v. Ashcroft), which challenges recent copyright term extensions.

Brewster is profiled in Digerati: Encounters with the Cyber Elite (HardWired, 1996). He was selected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005, the AlwaysOn/Technorati Open Media 100 in 2005, the Upside 100 in 1997, the Micro Times 100 in 1996 and 1997, and the Computer Week 100 in 1995.

Andrew McLaughlin

Andrew McLaughlin Partner, betaworks
CEO, Digg and Instapaper

Andrew McLaughlin is a technology law and policy nerd. Andrew McLaughlin is a partner at betaworks, a technology and media start-up studio based in New York City. He also serves as CEO of Digg and Instapaper.

Previously, Andrew served as the Executive Director of Civic Commons, a Code for America non-profit that help cities and other governments share and implement low-cost technologies to improve public services, management, accountability, transparency, and citizen engagement.

From 2009-2011, Andrew McLaughlin served on President Obama's White House staff as Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States, focusing on Internet, technology, and innovation policy, including open government, cybersecurity, online privacy and free speech, federal R&D priorities, spectrum policy, entrepreneurship, and building open technology platforms for health care, energy efficiency, and education. Prior to the White House, he served on the Obama/Biden presidential transition team, as a member of the Technology, Innovation and Government Reform cluster. From 2004-2009, Andrew was Director of Global Public Policy at Google.

From 1999-2002, Andrew helped launch and manage ICANN, the Internet's technical coordinating organization, serving as Vice President, Chief Policy Officer, and Chief Financial Officer. From 1998-2005, Andrew was a Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. In 2002-2003, Andrew taught a course on digital democracy at Harvard Law School while working on Internet and telecom law reform projects in a number of developing countries, including Ghana, Mongolia, Kenya, Afghanistan, and South Africa. He was a co-founder of CIPESA, a technology policy think-tank and advocacy center based at Makerere University in Uganda. At Google, Andrew co-led Google's Africa strategy, and served as a member of the Board of Directors of Bridges.org, an international non-profit organization based in Cape Town.

Andrew holds a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. After clerking on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, Andrew started his legal career at Jenner & Block in Washington DC, where he focused on appellate and constitutional litigation. He was a member of the legal team that challenged the U.S. government's first Internet censorship law, resulting in the Supreme Court's landmark 1997 Internet free speech ruling in ACLU vs. Reno. From 1997-98, Andrew served as counsel to the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. In 2000, Time Magazine named Andrew one of its Digital Dozen. In 2001, he was named a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. He is a fellow of the Young Leaders Forum of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

Michael Petricone

Michael Petricone SVP, Government Affairs Consumer Electronics Association

Michael Petricone is the senior vice president of government affairs for the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA).

In his position, Michael is responsible for representing the CE industry’s position before Congress and the FCC on critical issues such as Internet freedom, wireless spectrum, and high-skilled immigration. He is a frequent speaker on policy issues impacting the innovation industry. He has been frequently listed as one of DC’s top technology lobbyists.

Michael received his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and his undergraduate degree from Tufts University.

Frank C. Torres, III

Director of Consumer Affairs and a Senior Policy Counsel, Microsoft Corporation

Frank Torres is the Director of Consumer Affairs and a Senior Policy Counsel for the Microsoft Corporation. He leads the company’s engagement strategy with consumer and privacy advocates and civil rights organizations. Frank also directs federal policy activity and strategy on privacy, including issues related to government surveillance, and represents Microsoft’s interests on those issues before Congress and the administration.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Frank served as Legislative Counsel in the Washington, DC consumer advocacy office of Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. He testified on numerous occasions before the United States Congress on privacy issues and legislation while at Consumers Union. Frank was a member of the Federal Trade Commission Advisory Committee on Online Access and Security, and served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board’s Consumer Advisory Council.

Mr. Torres received his law degree from George Washington University and his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University.

Kevin Werbach

Kevin Werbach Professor, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Founder, Supernova Group

Kevin Werbach is a leading expert on the business, legal, and social implications of Internet and communications technologies. Werbach is Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. His research addresses strategic and public policy issues at the intersection of law, business, and technology, with a focus on the increasing pervasiveness of networks. He is the also the founder of Supernova Group, a technology analysis and consulting firm. He organizes the annual Supernova conference, which has been described by John Seely Brown as, "one of the must-attends of the digerati and forward thinkers of the networked age." He served on the Obama Administration's Presidential Transition Team, and was employed as an expert advisor on broadband policy to the FCC and National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Werbach is the former editor of Release 1.0, a renowned industry publication that provided leading-edge analysis of key technology trends for senior executives. With Esther Dyson, he co-organized the annual PC Forum conference. Previously, he served as Counsel for New Technology Policy at the FCC. Called "one of the few policy wonks who really got it" by Wired, he helped develop the United States Government's e-commerce policies, shaped the FCC's approach to Internet issues, and authored Digital Tornado, the first comprehensive analysis of the implications of the Internet on telecommunications.

A sought-after speaker and commentator, Werbach appears frequently in print and broadcast media including CNN, PBS, CNBC, NPR, ABC News, USA Today, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Economist. His writing has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Wired, IEEE Spectrum, Harvard Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Berkeley Technology Law Journal, Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, Slate, and Business 2.0, among other publications, and he has been invited to testify before the United States Senate, House of Representatives, and FCC. He is a fellow of the Global Institute for Communications in Japan; an editorial board member of Wharton Digital Press; an advisor to the Just Press Play Project, Knowledge@Wharton, and the SEI Center for Advanced Management; and a member of the editorial boards of Info, The Journal of Information Policy, and I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society.

Werbach is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, where he served as Publishing Editor of the law review, and a summa cum laude graduate of the University of California at Berkeley. He lives with his family in the Philadelphia area.