Past Featured Speakers I Past Speakers
Elliot Schrage
VP of Global Communications & Public Affairs, Google
Elliot Schrage is
a lawyer and business advisor with 20 years of experience at the
intersection of global business strategy and public policy. At Google
he is responsible for corporate communications and public affairs,
which encompass media relations, stakeholder outreach and policy
strategy.
Prior to joining Google, Elliot was the Bernard L. Schwarz Senior
Fellow in Business and Foreign Policy at the New York-based Council on
Foreign Relations, and an advisor to several global corporations on
issues of corporate social responsibility. Immediately preceding, he
was Senior Vice President for Global Affairs for Gap Inc., the largest
specialty retailer in the U.S., where he directed the company's
government affairs initiatives and managed its global compliance
organization.
Before joining Gap, Elliot served as managing director of the New York
office of Clark & Weinstock, a public policy and management
consulting firm. Since 1990, Elliot has also served as Adjunct
Professor at Columbia University Business School and Columbia Law
School. He has published articles in the Harvard Business Review, The
Washington Post, The Financial Times, among other publications.
Elliot received a J.D., Harvard Law School, a Master in Public Policy
(MPP) degree from the Kennedy School of Government, and B.A. from
Harvard College. He also studied at École Normale Superieure in Paris.
Ken Mehlman
Former Chair, Republican National Committee
Ken Mehlman has served as Chairman of the Republican National Committee since January 2005. When elected, he presented four goals for his term as Chairman: Enact and articulate our reform agenda; Deepen and broaden the GOP so we’re growing our party; Work to elect the best candidates in 2005, 2006 and 2008; and, Institutionalize the grassroots focus.
Before his election as Chairman, Mehlman served as campaign manager for Bush-Cheney ’04, where Michael Barone called him “the structural engineer who turned the plans into reality.” Mehlman served from 2001 to 2003 as White House Political Director. Charlie Cook said that under Mehlman’s watch, “the White House political office has reached the greatest prominence in this administration that it's ever had.”
Mehlman was National Field Director for Bush-Cheney 2000, where he worked with the campaign leadership in all fifty states and the Republican National Committee to execute winning political plans and mobilize strong grassroots.
Before joining President Bush, Mehlman was Congresswoman Kay Granger’s (TX-12) Chief of Staff and Congressman Lamar Smith’s (TX-21) Legislative Director. He practiced environmental law in Washington and assisted campaigns in Massachusetts, Ohio, Virginia, Texas, and Georgia, as well as the 1992 and 1996 Presidential campaigns.
Mehlman is a graduate of Harvard Law School and received his undergraduate degree from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He is a native of Baltimore, Maryland.
Scott Thomas
Former Chair, Federal Election Commission
Scott Thomas joined Dickstein Shapiro in 2006 as of counsel in the Government Law & Strategy Group and is the head of the Political Law Practice. A former Federal Election Commission (FEC) Chairman, Mr. Thomas focuses his political law practice on campaign finance, ethics, and lobbying law. His extensive and distinguished background in the area of political law is a valuable resource in providing guidance and assurance to clients who need to interact with government officials. With more than 30 years of experience in this field, he assesses current compliance issues and suggests best practices to ensure adherence to the rules. Given the ever-changing law and its interpretations by regulatory bodies, Mr. Thomas provides up-to-date advice that enables businesses, associations, PACs, and others to work successfully with government representatives at the federal, state, or local level.
Joe Trippi
National Campaign Manager, Dean for America
Joe Trippi, heralded on the cover of The New Republic as the man who “reinvented campaigning,” was born in California and began his political career working on Edward M. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1980. His work in presidential politics continued with the campaigns of Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Richard Gephardt and most recently Howard Dean.
As a campaign manager, Trippi has run presidential, Senate, gubernatorial and mayoral campaigns. He was selected by former Vice President Walter Mondale to manage Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses in 1984 and later went on to run several key states for the Mondale for President campaign. In 1988, Trippi was the Deputy National Campaign Manager for Richard Gephardt’s presidential campaign.
In 2004, he was National Campaign Manager for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, pioneering the use of online technology to organize what became the largest grassroots movement in presidential politics. Through Trippi’s innovative use of the internet for small-donor fundraising, Dean for America ended up raising more money than any Democratic presidential campaign in history, all with donations averaging less than $100 each. Trippi’s innovations have brought fundamental change to the electoral system and will be the model for how all future political campaigns are run.
Trippi began his work in media consulting at the Democratic media firm of Doak, Shrum and Associates, where he was involved in developing the strategy and producing the media for the successful campaigns of Jerry Baliles for Governor of Virginia and Bob Casey for Governor of Pennsylvania. Trippi was also instrumental in the re-election campaigns of U.S. Senator Alan Cranston of California and Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles.
Joe Trippi has been profiled in GQ, Wired, Fast Company, The New Republic and The New York Times Magazine. He is an MSNBC political analyst and former Harvard University fellow. He currently heads the Washington, DC political consultancy, Trippi & Associates.
In addition to his work in politics, Trippi works with a number of high-tech companies including Wave Systems, Progeny Linux Systems, and Smart Paper Networks.
Trippi is the author of, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet and the Overthrow of Everything,” the story of how his revolutionary use of the Internet and an impassioned, contagious desire to overthrow politics as usual grew into a national grassroots movement and changed the face of politics, and indeed many aspects of American life, forever.
The father of three, he lives with his wife, Kathleen Lash, and their terrier, Kasey, on the eastern shore of Maryland.
