Bulletins

Biden's transition is stacked with tech players

Biden's transition is stacked with tech players

Joe Biden's transition is absolutely stacked with tech industry players, according to a list of Biden agency review teams released Tuesday.

There's no one on this new list from Facebook, Google or Apple (although there are people from those companies involved in the broader transition), but there's definitive Silicon Valley representation and thought leaders on tech issues involved in shaping the future of the federal government. We went through the list so you don't have to.

From big-name tech companies:

  • Tom Sullivan, Amazon's international policy team (State Department)
  • Mark Schwartz, Amazon Web Services' enterprise strategist (Office of Management and Budget)
  • Divya Kumaraiah, Airbnb's strategy and program lead for cities (Office of Management and Budget)
  • Brandon Belford, Lyft's senior director and its public policy team's chief of staff (Office of Management and Budget)
  • Nicole Isaac, LinkedIn's senior director of North America policy (Treasury Department)
  • Will Fields, Sidewalk Labs' senior development associate (Treasury Department)
  • Clare Gallagher, Airbnb's partnerships & events manager (National Security Council)
  • Matt Olsen, Uber's trust and security officer (Intelligence Community)
  • Arthur Plews, Stripe's strategy and operations lead (Small Business Administration)
  • Ted Dean, Dropbox's public policy lead (U.S. Trade Representative)
  • Ann Dunkin, Dell's chief technology officer (Environmental Protection Agency)
  • Phillip Carter, Tableau Software's senior corporate counsel (Department of Veterans Affairs)
  • Nairi Tashjian Hourdajian, VP of comms at Figma (Department of Transportation)
  • Nicole Wong, former Google and Twitter, former Obama Deputy Chief Technology Officer (Office of Science and Technology Policy)

From tech philanthropy:

  • Martha Gimbel, senior manager of economic research at Schmidt Futures (Council of Economic Advisers)
  • Andrew Nacin, director of engineering at CZI (U.S. Digital Service)
  • Austin Lin, technical program manager for security and privacy at CZI (Executive Office of the President, management and administration)
  • Linda Etim, senior adviser at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (team lead for International Development)

From tech advocacy:

  • Sarah Miller, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project (Treasury Department)
  • Gene Kimmelman, senior adviser for Public Knowledge, former DOJ antitrust official (Department of Justice)
  • Laura Moy, director of Georgetown's Communications & Technology Law Clinic (Federal Trade Commission)
  • Bill Baer, visiting fellow at Brookings Institution, former FTC and DOJ (Federal Trade Commission)

There's also Victor Garcia and David Holmes from Rebellion Defense, a company backed by Eric Schmidt, and Natalie Kates and Raphael Majma from Reid Hoffman-backed Alloy.

Correction: This story was updated at 12:08 p.m. PT Nov. 11 to correct the title of Amazon's Tom Sullivan.

Emily Birnbaum

Emily Birnbaum ( @birnbaum_e) is a former tech policy reporter with Protocol. Her coverage focuses on the U.S. government's attempts to regulate one of the most powerful industries in the world, with a focus on antitrust, privacy and politics. Previously, she worked as a tech policy reporter with The Hill after spending several months as a breaking news reporter. She is a Bethesda, Maryland native and proud Kenyon College alumna.

and
 Anna Kramer

Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (Twitter: @ anna_c_kramer, email: akramer@protocol.com), where she writes about labor and workplace issues. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.

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