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Meet the Commission and Staff

Theodore B. Olson

Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; former Solicitor General of the United States

Mr. Olson is a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's Washington,D.C. office; a member of the firm's Executive Committee, Co-Chair of the Appellate and Constitutional Law Group and the firm's Crisis Management Team.

Mr. Olson was Solicitor General of the United States during the period 2001-2004. From 1981-1984 he was Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. Except for those two intervals, he has been a lawyer with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. since 1965.

Mr. Olson is one of the nation's premier appellate and United States Supreme Court advocates. He has argued 49 cases in the Supreme Court, including Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board and Bush v. Gore, stemming from the 2000 presidential election; prevailing in over 75% of those arguments. Mr. Olson's practice is concentrated on appellate and constitutional law, federal legislation, media and commercial disputes, and assisting clients with strategies for the containment, management and resolution of major legal crises occurring at the federal/state, criminal/civil and domestic/international levels. He has handled cases at all levels of state and federal court systems throughout the United States, and in international tribunals.

Mr. Olson's Supreme Court arguments have included cases involving separation of powers; federalism; voting rights; the First Amendment; the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses; sentencing; jury trial rights; punitive damages; takings of property and just compensation; the Commerce Clause; taxation; immigration; criminal law; copyright; antitrust; securities; telecommunications; the internet; and other federal constitutional and statutory questions.

Mr. Olson has served as private counsel to two Presidents, Ronald W.Reagan and George W. Bush, in addition to serving those two Presidents in high-level positions in the Department of Justice. He has twice received the United States Department of Justice's Edmund J. Randolph Award, named for the first Attorney General, its highest award for public service and leadership. He has also been awarded the Department of Defense's highest civilian award for his advocacy in the courts of the United States, including the Supreme Court, on behalf of that Department. He was a visiting scholar at the National Constitution Center in 2007.

Mr. Olson received his law degree in 1965 from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) where he was a member of the California Law Review and Order of the Coif. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of the Pacific, where he was recognized as the outstanding graduating student in both forensics and journalism.Mr. Olson has written and lectured extensively on appellate advocacy,oral communication in the courtroom, civil justice reform, punitive damages, and constitutional and administrative law.

Marissa Mayer

Vice President, Search Product & User Experience, Google

Marissa leads the company's product management efforts on search products – web search, images, news, books, products, maps, Google Earth, the Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Health, Google Labs, and more. She joined Google in 1999 as Google's first female engineer and led the user interface and web server teams at that time. Her efforts have included designing and developing Google's search interface, internationalizing the site to more than 100 languages, defining Google News, Gmail, and Orkut, and launching more than 100 features and products on Google.com. Several patents have been filed on her work in artificial intelligence and interface design. In her spare time, Marissa also organizes Google Movies – outings a few times a year to see the latest blockbusters – for 6,000+ people (employees plus family and friends). Concurrently with her full-time work at Google, Marissa has taught introductory computer programming classes at Stanford to more than 3,000 students.

Stanford has recognized her with the Centennial Teaching Award and the Forsythe Award for her outstanding contribution to undergraduate education.Prior to joining Google, Marissa worked at the UBS research lab (Ubilab) in Zurich, Switzerland, and at SRI International in Menlo Park, California.

Marissa has been featured in various publications, including Newsweek ("10 Tech Leaders of the Future"), Red Herring ("15 Women to Watch"), Business 2.0 ("Silicon Valley Dream Team"), BusinessWeek, Fortune, and Fast Company.

Graduating with honors, Marissa received her B.S. in Symbolic Systems and her M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University. For both degrees, she specialized in artificial intelligence.

danah boyd

Social activist and independent writer on youth and media

danah boyd is a doctoral candidate in the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley and a Fellow at the Harvard University Law School Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Her research focuses on how American youth engage in networked publics like MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Xanga, etc. She is interested in how teens formulate a presentation of self and negotiate socialization in mediated contexts with invisible audiences. This work is funded by the MacArthur Foundation as part of a broader grant on digital youth and informal learning.

As a part of her Berkman Center fellowship, danah is co-directing the Internet Safety Technical Task Force to work with companies and non-profits to identify potential technical solutions for keeping children safe online. This Task Force was formed by the U.S. Attorneys General and MySpace and is being organized by the Berkman Center.

Prior to Berkeley, danah received a bachelor's degree in computer science from Brown University and a master's degree in sociable media from MIT Media Lab. She has worked as an ethnographer and social media researcher for various corporations, including Intel, Tribe.net, Google, and Yahoo! She also created and managed a large online community for V-Day, a non-profit organization working to end violence against women and girls worldwide. She has advised numerous other companies, sits on corporate advisory boards, and regularly speaks at industry conferences and events.

danah maintains a blog on social media called Apophenia http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/

John S. Carroll

Former editor, Lexington Herald-Leader, Baltimore Sun, and Los Angeles Times

John S. Carroll has edited three newspapers: the Los Angeles Times (2000-2005), the Baltimore Sun (1991-2000), and the Lexington Herald-Leader (1979-1991). In 2006 he served as Knight Visiting Lecturer at Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

He first became a reporter for at Providence Journal-Bulletin (1963-64). At the Baltimore Sun (1966-72), he was posted to Vietnam, the Middle East and Washington. In the 1970s, he was metropolitan editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Carroll is a graduate of Haverford College (1963) and served in the Army (1964-66). He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard (1971-72) and had a similar fellowship at Oxford (1988). He served on the Pulitzer Prize Board (1994-2003) and was its chairman in 2002.

He has received several individual awards, and the L.A. Times won 13 Pulitzer Prizes during his tenure. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Robert W. Decherd

President and CEO, A.H. Belo Corporation

Robert Decherd is one of the longest-tenured chief executive officers in the media industry in the United States, having worked for Belo Corp. since his graduation from Harvard College in 1973 and serving as CEO since January 1, 1987. During his tenure, Belo has become one of the largest and most respected media companies in America, and is rapidly transforming into an Internet-centric organization.

During Decherd's years as CEO, the Company has grown in revenues from $397 million to $1.6 billion. Net income has grown from $20 million to more than $130 million. The Company's three major newspapers and 19 television stations, including nine of the top 30 markets, have won 13 Pulitzer Prizes, 21 duPont-Columbia Awards, 19 George Foster Peabody Awards and 27 Edward R. Murrow Awards the most prestigious journalistic awards in the newspaper publishing and television businesses. Belo's Web sites have been recognized as some of the leading sites supported by legacy media companies, and in 2006, generated $64 million in revenue and 1.6 billion page views.

Aside from his corporate duties, Decherd has played a significant role in the newspaper and television broadcasting industries, and in freedom of information organizations. He has served on the boards of the Newspaper Association of America and the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, which he helped found, as well being appointed to Presidential and FCC commissions concerned with television industry issues. He received the James Madison Award from the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas in 1989 and the Freedom of Speech Award from the Media Institute in 1998. He was recognized as "American Newspaper Executive of the Year" in 1985 by AdWeek magazine and received the Mayborn Award for Community Leadership from the Texas Daily Newspaper Association in 1997.

Decherd has played a prominent role in Dallas civic affairs for almost 30 years, with an emphasis on education and inclusiveness, and a leading role in city and urban planning issues. In 1988, he was named an Honorary Member of the Texas Society of Architects for distinguished service in Dallas over time, and received an American Institute of Architects "Citation of Honor" in 1981 for his work to establish the Dallas Arts District in Downtown Dallas. He has chaired or organized numerous civic initiatives promoting city and urban planning, including the creation of The Dallas Plan in 1991, and chaired or co-chaired three concurrent planning efforts from 2003-2005 that resulted in a comprehensive physical plan for the center city of Dallas. At his urging, The Dallas Morning News has played a consistent and Robert W. Decherd aggressive role in similar efforts, including two major studies conducted by outside experts hired by The Morning News in 1990 and 2000, and a broader assessment of Dallas city government with outside experts hired by the newspaper in 2004.

Decherd has orchestrated a series of acquisitions that substantially changed the Company's asset base since 1981. Beginning with the $606 million acquisition of the Corinthian Broadcast Group from The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation in 1984, which was the largest television acquisition in history at the time, the Company has purchased WWL-TV in New Orleans, Louisiana (1991); The Providence Journal Company (1997); and, the Riverside Press-Enterprise (1998). The $1.8 billion dollar acquisition of The Providence Journal Company solidified Belo's position as one of America's premier newsgathering and advertising sales organizations. Belo currently owns three major newspapers and 19 television stations; owns or operates seven cable news channels; and operates more than 30 Web sites. Its principal newspapers are The Dallas Morning News, The Providence Journal and The Press-Enterprise. Nine of its television stations are in the top 30 markets including Dallas/Fort Worth (WFAATV/ABC), Houston (KHOU-TV/CBS), Seattle/Tacoma (KING-TV/NBC and (KONG-TV/IND) and Phoenix (KTVK/IND and KASW-TV/CW).

Decherd has served on the board of directors of Kimberly-Clark Corporation since 1996 and, since 2004, has been Kimberly-Clark's lead director and chairman of its executive committee. He also serves on the Advisory Council of the Center for Ethics at Harvard University and has been a member of the Graduate Council of The Harvard Crimson for more than three decades. As a former president of The Crimson (1972-73), Decherd has been one of that newspaper's strongest advocates and financial supporters. He currently serves on the Board of Visitors of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Reed E. Hundt

Former Chairman, Federal Communications Commission

Mr. Hundt served four years as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), from 1993 to 1997.

Mr. Hundt serves on the board of directors of Intel, Data Domain, Infinera, Knogee, Vanu, Inc., Tropos, Telegent, Public Knowledge and Access Spectrum. He is also a part-time advisor to McKinsey & Company, and also serves is a principal of Charles Ross Partners, an advisory firm.

Mr. Hundt is the author of You Say You Want a Revolution: A Story of Information Age Politics (Yale University Press, 2000) and In China’s Shadow: The Crisis of American Entrepreneurship (Yale University Press, 2006).

Benjamin Todd Jealous

President, Rosenberg Foundation and President-Elect, NAACP

Benjamin Todd Jealous is president-elect of the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. When he assumes office in September 2008, the former news executive, activist and Rhodes scholar will be the youngest president and CEO in the organization’s 99-year history.

Currently, Jealous is President of the Rosenberg Foundation, a private independent institution that supports advocacy efforts on behalf of California's working families. Under his leadership, the Foundation has significantly expanded its support of groups working to expand employment opportunities for formerly incarcerated people, as well as those that work to make economic development in the Bay Area more accountable to local residents’ needs.

Previously, Jealous served as Director of the U.S. Human Rights Program at Amnesty International. While at Amnesty, he led its efforts to pass federal legislation against prison rape, rebuild public consensus against racial profiling in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks, and expose the widespread sentencing of children to life without the possibility of parole. He is the lead author of the 2004 report Threat and Humiliation: Racial Profiling, Domestic Security, and Human Rights in the United States, the release of which received coverage by major media outlets in most states and on six continents.

Jealous, whose parents have been civil rights activists since the 1950s, organized his first voter registration drive at age 14. At age 18, he began working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund as a community organizer in Harlem. At age 21, Jealous moved to Mississippi to work as a field organizer as part of a successful campaign to stop the state’s plan to close two of its three public historically black universities, and convert one of them into a prison. During that time, he took a job
at the Mississippi’s Jackson Advocate newspaper investigating human rights abuses. His reporting for the frequently firebombed weekly paper was credited with exposing corruption amongst high-ranking officials at the state prison in Parchman. His investigations also helped to acquit a black small farmer who had been wrongfully and maliciously accused of arson.

He soon became Managing Editor at the Advocate, and eventually went on to serve as Executive Director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), a federation of more than 200 black community newspapers. While at the NNPA, he rebuilt its 90-year old national news service and launched a web-based initiative that more than doubled the number of black newspapers publishing online.

Active in civic life, Jealous is a board member of the California Council for the Humanities, PowerPAC, the Association of Black Foundation Executives, and a member of the Asia Society. He holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Columbia University and a master's degree in comparative social research from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is married to Lia Epperson Jealous, a professor of constitutional law and former civil rights litigator with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. They presently reside in Alameda, CA with their two-year old daughter, Morgan.

Mary E. Junck

Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Lee Enterprises Inc.

Mary Junck joined Lee in 1999 as executive vice president and chief operating officer. She became president in 2000, chief executive officer in 2001 and chairman in January 2002. She is chairman of the Executive Committee of Lee’s board of directors.

She previously held senior executive positions at the former Times Mirror Company. As executive vice president of Times Mirror and president of Times Mirror Eastern Newspapers, she was responsible for all newspaper operations in the region, including Newsday, The Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courant, The Morning Call, and Southern Connecticut Newspapers. She also had responsibility for Times Mirror magazines and StayWell, Times Mirror’s consumer health company. She held that position from 1997 until she left the company in 1999. From 1993 to 1997, Mary was publisher and chief executive officer of The Baltimore Sun. From 1990 to 1992, she was publisher and president of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, where she had served as president, general manager and senior vice president since 1985.

Mary began her career at the Charlotte Observer in 1972 as marketing research manager and advanced to retail advertising manager. In 1977, she joined the Miami Herald as advertising marketing manager, and later was promoted to assistant advertising director. She was appointed to the Knight Ridder corporate staff in 1982 and became assistant to the senior vice president of operations.

Before moving to Davenport, she was widely known in Baltimore civic circles, where she had been a member of several boards and the Greater Baltimore Alliance, a regional economic development group. She also served on the Johns Hopkins Medicine Board, Greater Baltimore Community Board, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Board, University of Maryland Baltimore County Visitors Board and Washington Baltimore Regional 2012 Coalition. She serves on the board of directors of The Associated Press and is a former board member of the Newspaper Association of America. In Davenport, she serves on the board of DavenportOne and is a past board member of Putnam Museum.

She is a native of Ogden, Iowa. She received a bachelor of arts degree in English from Valparaiso University in Indiana and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Monica Lozano

Senior Vice President of ImpreMedia, Publisher & CEO of La Opinión

Monica Lozano has been with La Opinión 19 years having served as the paper's editor, associate publisher and more recently, president and chief operating officer responsible for the day-to-day operations of the company. In January of 2004, she became Publisher and CEO of La Opinión and Senior VP of ImpreMedia, assuming full responsibility for the country's largest Spanish language daily newspaper. Under her direction, the newspaper has entered into important strategic partnerships with key media companies as well as public and private entities. She oversaw the launch of new advertising products such as La Opinión Direct as well as the introduction of new targeted sections, and the licensing of La Opinión content outside of the southern California region. She is a nationally recognized leader on Hispanic issues and serves on corporate and non-profit boards including the Walt Disney Company, the University of Southern California and the National Council of La Raza.

Lisa MacCallum

Managing Director, Nike

Lisa brings 15 years of business management experience to the Foundation, including senior roles directing Nike’s U.S. strategy and leading business development for several multibillion dollar businesses. Before joining Nike, Lisa was cofounder and director of the Tokyo-based satellite and Internet broadcasting company Business Breakthrough, Inc. Lisa was born and raised in Australia, is a Certified Chartered Accountant and got her professional start with KPMG.

Andrew Mooney

Executive Director, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC)

Mooney has extensive experience in housing, economic and community development. He has served as executive director and chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority, managed the Des Moines Chamber of Commerce and started a consulting firm focused on urban economic development, housing and labor issues. Mooney graduated from Notre Dame and received a master's degree from the University of Chicago. He joined LISC/Chicago in 1995.

Donna D. Nicely

Director, Nashville Public Library

Donna has served as Director of the Nashville Public Library since 1995. Prior to that, she was Director of the DeKalb Public Library in Decatur, GA. She is involved in many leadership positions in her community and the library profession, including the boards of Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, Books from Birth of Middle Tennessee, the Nashville Downtown Partnership, Country Music Foundation, and Nashville’s Agenda Steering Committee. Donna has served on the Urban Libraries Council Executive Board, and was Chair from 2004-2005. In 2007, she was named one of “Nashville's Top 50 Leaders for the Future” in CELEBRATE NASHVILLE, the official publication for Nashville’s 200 year anniversary.

Michael K. Powell

Chairman, The MK Powell Group and former Chairman, Federal Communications Commission

The Honorable Michael K. Powell served as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission at a time of revolutionary change in technology and communications. He was appointed by President Clinton in 1997 and was designated Chairman by President Bush in 2001.

As Chairman, Mr. Powell created the right regulatory conditions to stimulate the deployment of powerful technologies that put more power in the hands of the people. He clearly saw the importance of the rise of digital technologies and the impact they would have on our lives, from health care to education. As Chairman, he focused on initiatives that encouraged market-driven solutions that promoted consumer interests and drove innovative approaches to getting broadband technology out to people-such as broadband over power lines, WiFi Hotspots, Cable broadband and DSL. These competitive alternatives expanded affordable broadband options to all Americans and helped narrow the digital divide. From campaigning for the right to keep your phone number when switching wireless carriers, to fighting to block unwanted telemarketing calls with a Do-Not-Call list, to cautiously policing the airwaves of indecency. Mr. Powell put consumers on the forefront in this exciting and dynamic marketplace.

Chairman Powell previously served as the Chief of Staff of the Antitrust Division in the Department of Justice. In that capacity, he advised the Assistant Attorney General on substantive antitrust matters and managed the division.

Before joining the Antitrust Division, Mr. Powell was an associate in the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, and just prior to joining the firm clerked for the Honorable Harry T. Edwards, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Before starting his legal career, Mr. Powell served as a policy advisor on Japan to the Secretary of Defense. In addition, his experience includes military service as an armored cavalry officer in the United States Army. While on duty, Mr. Powell was seriously injured in a training accident and-after spending a year in the hospital-was retired from service.

Mr. Powell graduated in 1985 from the College of William and Mary with a degree in Government. He earned his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.

Mr. Powell is currently a Senior Advisor of Providence Equity Partners, Mr. Powell additionally serves as Rector of the Board of Visitors of the College of William and Mary. He is a board member of Cisco, ObjectVideo, the Rand Corporation, and the Aspen Institute. He is also working to raise resources to build the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial in Washington, DC.

 

Rey Ramsey

Chief Executive Officer, One Economy Corporation

Rey Ramsey is chief executive officer of One Economy Corporation.
Co-founded by Mr. Ramsey in 2000, One Economy Corporation leverages the power of technology and information to connect low-income people to the economic mainstream by bringing broadband into their homes, producing public-purpose media, and training and employing youth to enhance communities' technological capacity. Learn more at www.one-economy.com.

Mr. Ramsey led the organization's growth from four employees working in basement to a global organization that has taken root on four continents. Since 2000, One Economy has helped bring broadband access into the homes of over 300,000 low-income Americans. More than 14 million people have visited One Economy's multilingual web properties and hundreds of youth have delivered nearly 50,000 hours of service to their communities.

Mr. Ramsey has spent years creating innovative partnerships between nonprofits, government and the private sector. Mr. Ramsey is the author, with Ben Hecht, of the book ManagingNonprofits.org: Dynamic Management for the Digital Age (John Wiley & Sons).

Prior to the founding of One Economy, Mr. Ramsey served as president and chief operating officer of the Enterprise Foundation. Before joining Enterprise, Mr. Ramsey served in the cabinets of two governors of Oregon as the state's director of housing and community services and practiced law.

Mr. Ramsey serves on many boards, including the Schnitzer Investment Corporation, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), and the Washington Jesuit Academy, where he is vice-chairman. He was the chairman of Habitat for Humanity International from 2003-2005. He holds a bachelors degree in political science from Rutgers University and is a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School.

Paul Sagan

President and CEO, Akamai

Paul Sagan, president and CEO of Akamai, joined the company in October 1998. Mr. Sagan was elected to the Akamai Board of Directors in January 2005, and he became CEO in April 2005. He brings to Akamai the experience of leading visionary technology companies and media businesses and a wealth of management experience.

Previously, Mr. Sagan served as senior advisor to the World Economic Forum from 1997 to 1998, consulting to the Geneva-based organization on information technology for the world's 1,000 foremost multinational corporations.

In 1995, Mr. Sagan was named president and editor of new media at Time Inc., a division of Time Warner, and worked in that role until 1997. Previously, he served as managing editor of Time Warner's News on Demand project and was a senior member of the team responsible for the development of the company's online, cable online, electronic publishing, and Internet publishing activities. He was a founder of Road Runner, the world's first broadband cable modem service, and Pathfinder, one of the Web properties that pioneered Internet advertising.

Mr. Sagan joined Time Warner in 1991 to design and launch NY 1 News, the cable news network based in New York City. NY 1 became known for its groundbreaking use of digital video technology and video journalists carrying their own small-format cameras. As a senior vice president of Time Warner Cable, Mr. Sagan participated in the creation of a corporate group that developed and launched similar owned-and-operated cable news channels in other metropolitan areas.

Mr. Sagan's career began in broadcast television news. He joined WCBS-TV in 1981 as a news writer and was named news director in 1987 at age 28, the youngest person to hold the position in the network's history.

Mr. Sagan is a three-time Emmy Award winner and was named a Global Leader for Tomorrow in 1996 by the World Economic Forum. He is a director of Massachusetts-based EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC).

Mr. Sagan is a Trustee of Northwestern University and a graduate of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. He is co-chairman of the Medill Board of Advisors; a member of the Dean's Council at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; an advisor to the MATCH charter public high school in Boston; and a member of the Presidential Advisory Council at the Berklee College of Music.

Alberto Ibargüen

President and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Ibargüen is the former publisher of The Miami Herald and of El Nuevo Herald. During his tenure, The Miami Herald won three Pulitzer Prizes and El Nuevo Herald won Spain’s Ortega y Gasset Prize for excellence in journalism.

He studied at Wesleyan University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Between college and law school, he served in the Peace Corps in Venezuela’s Amazon Territory and in Colombia. He practiced law in Hartford, Connecticut until he joined The Hartford Courant, then Newsday in New York before moving to Miami.

Ibargüen is chairman of the board of the Newseum in Washington, D.C., a museum dedicated to free speech and free press. He is a member of the board of directors of PepsiCo, AMR (American Airlines), ProPublica, and Council on Foreign Relations.

He is a former board chairman of PBS. Over the years, he has served on the boards of arts, education and civic organizations, including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Wesleyan University and Smith College, the Trustees Council of the National Gallery of Art and the Advisory Committee of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB).

For his work to protect journalists in Latin America as part of the Inter American Press Association, Ibargüen received a Maria Moors Cabot citation from Columbia University and George Washington University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Letters.

Walter Isaacson

President and CEO of the Aspen Institute

Walter Isaacson has been the Chairman and CEO of CNN and the editor of Time Magazine. He is the author of Einstein: His Life and Universe, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003), and Kissinger: A Biography (1992) and is the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986).

Isaacson was born on May 20, 1952, in New Orleans. He is a graduate of Harvard College and of Pembroke College of Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

He began his career at the Sunday Times of London and then the New Orleans Times-Picayune/States-Item. He joined Time Magazine in 1978 and served as a political correspondent, national editor and editor of new media before becoming the magazine's 14th managing editor in 1996. He became chairman and CEO of CNN in 2001, and then president and CEO of the Aspen Institute in 2003.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, he was appointed by Governor Kathleen Blanco to be the vice-chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. In December 2007, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to be the chairman of the U.S.-Palestinian Partnership, a government and private sector effort to provide economic and educational opportunities for the Palestinian people. He is the chairman of the Board of Teach for America, and he is on the boards of United Airlines, Tulane University, and Science Service. He is also on the advisory councils of the National Institutes of Health, the National Constitution Center, and the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC.

He lives with his wife and daughter in Washington, D.C.

 

Commission Staff

Peter M. Shane

Executive Director, Knight Commission

Peter M. Shane is the Jacob E. Davis and Jacob E. Davis II Chair in Law at the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, where he also directs the Project on Law and Democratic Development. In addition, he serves as Distinguished Service Professor (Adjunct) of Law and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, where he was the founding director of the Institute for the Study of Information Technology and Society (InSITeS).

An internationally recognized authority on constitutional and administrative law, Peter has been dubbed by one blogger as “a major figure in the e-democracy movement” because of his work on the use of new information technologies to expand opportunities for the general public to participate meaningfully in the formulation of public policy. With Professor Stephen Coleman of the University of Leeds, he co-chairs the NSF-supported International Working Group on Online Consultation and Public Policy Making (IWG). The IWG has launched the “(R)E-connecting Democracy” Project, analyzing the policy and other social impacts of online citizen consultation initiatives aimed at influencing actual government decision making (www.reconnectingdemocracy.org). From 2002-2006, Peter was Principal Investigator for the NSF-funded “Virtual Agora Project” (www.virtualagora.org), a software engineering and social science project designed to shed light on the dynamics of online and face-to-face deliberation.

Peter is a familiar public commentator on constitutional and legal affairs. He has been interviewed on both The Jim Lehrer NewsHour and C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, and his op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, and other major newspapers.

A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, Professor Shane clerked for the Hon. Alvin B. Rubin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He served as an attorney-adviser in the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel and as an assistant general counsel in the Office of Management and Budget, before entering full-time teaching in 1981 at the University of Iowa. He has visited at Duke, Boston College, and Villanova Law Schools, and was the inaugural “Visiting Foreign Chair” for the University of Ghent Program in Foreign and Comparative Law in Ghent, Belgium, in 2001. Peter was dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law from 1994 to 1998, when, following a national survey, he was cited by Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, published by the American Association for Higher Education, as one of 40 “Young Leaders of the Academy” – the only law dean on the list. From 2003-2007, he directed the Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies at Ohio State University.

Recent books include PETER M. SHANE, ED., DEMOCRACY ONLINE: THE PROSPECTS FOR POLITICAL RENEWAL THROUGH THE INTERNET (Routledge, 2004), and PETER M. SHANE, JOHN PODESTA AND RICHARD C. LEONE, EDS., A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE: PRIVACY, SECURITY AND PUBLIC INFORMATION AFTER SEPTEMBER 11 (Century Foundation Press, 2004). Peter chairs the Board of Editors of I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, and is a board member of both the Journal of Information Technology and Politics and the Journal of Public Deliberation.

Erin Silliman

Project Manager, Knight Commission and Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program

Erin Silliman joined the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program as a Project Manager in December 2007. She is currently the lead project manager for the Forum on Communications and Society (FOCAS) 2008 as well as the new Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. Prior to this position, Erin worked with the Commission on No Child Left Behind, another Aspen Institute Policy Program, as the manager of programs and coalitions.

Erin earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Bachelor of Arts degree in Music Performance from American University in Washington, DC in 2005. In her spare time she performs solo or with her quartet at weddings, receptions and other events. She also cycles competitively on a local racing team, Artemis.

Musetta Durkee

Research Associate, Knight Commission

Musetta Durkee is a research associate for the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. Her primary responsibility involves research work in various fields for Peter Shane, the Commission's executive director. In addition to her work for the Commission, Ms. Durkee is an independent scholar currently focusing on human rights, subjectivity and the body, mobility, ethics, and contemporary art, performance and philosophy. Prior to working for the Commission, she interned for Gladstone Gallery and Carnegie Hall in New York City. She holds an M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University and a B.A., cum laude, in Philosophy from Columbia University.