Susan Ness

Susan Ness, a distinguished fellow of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, is a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission and the founder of Susan Ness Strategies, a communications policy consulting firm. At APPC, she leads a project on “modularity” as a way to encourage multinational and multistakeholder engagement on digital regulation. She previously convened a high-level, transatlantic working group studying viral deception and hate speech online. Ness also is a nonresident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. As a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission from 1994 to 2001, Ness played a leading role on spectrum policy and championed children’s educational television, competition, and new technologies. After her FCC service, she taught courses on domestic and global communications policy as a distinguished visiting professor at the Annenberg School for Communication. She serves on the board of Vital Voices Global Partnership, an NGO that invests in women’s leadership worldwide. Previously, she served on the board of TEGNA Inc, a NYSE-listed media company, and on the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, where she twice was elected board vice chair.