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Broadband Breakfast @broadbandbreakfast.bsky.social · 20h

How will AI and broadband shape the midterm elections? Panel: • Blair Levin — NYU Center on Technology Policy • Joel Thayer — Digital Progress Institute • Nicholas P. Garcia — @publicknowledge.bsky.social • Evan Swarztrauber — CorePoint Strategies broadbandbreakfast.com/broadband-br...

Nicholas P. Garcia is a Senior Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge, focusing on emerging technologies, intellectual property, and closing the digital divide. Before joining Public Knowledge, Nick served as an Assistant District Attorney in the Investigations Division of the Bronx County District Attorney’s Office, where he investigated and prosecuted cybercrime, fraud, grand larceny, and organized crime. Nick received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, his M.A. in Ethics and Society from Fordham University’s Center for Ethics Education, and his B.A. in cursu honorum in Philosophy from Fordham University, where he was a member of the Phi Sigma Tau Honor Society.

Blair Levin has spent the past 30 years at the intersection of broadband policy and capital markets. On Tuesday, Oct. 13, the Center on Technology Policy (CTP) at New York University announced that Levin had joined CTP as a senior fellow.
Levin is an internationally recognized leader in technology and telecommunications policy, with a distinguished career spanning senior roles in federal government and decades of influential analysis of technology policy, business, and capital markets. From 1993 to 1997, Levin served as Chief of Staff to FCC Chairman Reed Hundt. In 2008–2009, he co-led the technology transition team for President-elect Barack Obama and subsequently oversaw the development of the 2010 National Broadband Plan. Levin has served as a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, The Aspen Institute, and the Brookings Institution. For more than two decades, he has worked as a telecommunications policy and equity analyst at firms including Legg Mason, Stifel Nicolaus, and New Street Research, earning him recognition from The Wall Street Journal as “the most learned of telecom analysts.” He is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.

Joel Thayer is the President of the Digital Progress Institute, a nonprofit seeking to bridge the policy divide between telecom and tech. He has founded his own law firm, Thayer PLLC, and was previously an associate at Phillips Lytle. Before that, he served as Policy Counsel for ACT | The App Association, where he advised on legal and policy issues related to antitrust, telecommunications, privacy, cybersecurity and intellectual property in Washington, DC. His experience also includes working as legal clerk for FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen and as a congressional staffer for the Hon. Lee Terry and the Hon. Mary Bono.

Evan Swarztrauber is principal and founder at CorePoint Strategies, a technology and telecommunications policy consulting firm. He is also a senior fellow at Digital Progress Institute and host of The Center Edge podcast. From 2017-2021, he served at the Federal Communications Commission as a policy advisor to then-Commissioner Brendan Carr and Chairman Ajit Pai. He has also served as a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, a senior vice president at public affairs agency AxAdvocacy, director of public affairs at technology think tank TechFreedom, and a staffer in the New York State Assembly. He received his undergraduate degree from The George Washington University.

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