Since September 2020, he’s been a Senior Advisor at the Mozilla Foundation, the entity that brought internet users the Firefox web browser.
His past experience includes roles as Director of Digital Economy for the U.S. Department of Commerce, and from 2005-2012 was an Americas Director of Public Policy for Google.
If Congress says yes, he’ll become the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information at the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), where FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington last worked.
President Biden’s nominee for the NTIA post is Alan Davidson.
He is viewed an internet policy expert with more than 20 years of experience as an executive, public interest advocate, technologist and attorney. Davidson is currently a Senior Advisor at the Mozilla Foundation, and was previously Mozilla’s VP of Global Policy, Trust and Security, where he led public policy and privacy teams promoting “an open Internet and a healthy web.”
Davidson served in the Obama Administration as the first Director of Digital Economy at the U.S. Department of Commerce. He is also known for starting Google’s public policy office in Washington, D.C., leading government relations and policy in North and South America.
It’s a choice that furthers the “net neutrality” cause that the White House under Biden seeks to push forward, reversing a course established under President Trump and returning to a policy first championed under President Obama.
Davidson is a long-time leader in the Internet nonprofit community. He’s also been Director of New America’s Open Technology Institute, and an Associate Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, where he is currently a Board Member.
At the NTIA, FCC Commissioner Simington served as Senior Advisor. In this role, he worked on many aspects of telecommunications policy, including spectrum allocation and planning, broadband access, and the federal government’s role in the internet.
His views are likely in contrast to Davidson’s on the latter topic.
