Andrew McLaughlin was a Future Tense fellow. He is SVP at betaworks and CEO of Digg and Instapaper, based in New York City.
McLaughlin is chairman of the board of Access, a member of the boards of directors of Chartbeat, the Sunlight Foundation, and Public Knowledge. From 2011-2013, McLaughlin served on the board of Code for America.
From 2009-2011, McLaughlin was a member of President Obama's senior White House staff, serving as deputy chief technology officer. In that role, McLaughlin was responsible for advising the President on Internet, technology, and innovation policy, including open government, cybersecurity, online privacy and free speech, spectrum policy, federal R&D priorities, entrepreneurship, and the creation of open technology standards and platforms for health care, energy efficiency, and education. In 2008-2009, he served on the Obama/Biden presidential transition team, as a member of the technology, innovation and government reform cluster.
From 2011-2012, McLaughlin was EVP of Tumblr, responsible for the international, community, outreach, editorial, marketing, and support teams. In 2011, McLaughlin served as the start-up executive director of Civic Commons, a Code for America initiative that helps governments build, share, and implement open-source technologies. From 2011-12, McLaughlin was also a lecturer in law at Stanford Law School, teaching a course on "Freedom of Speech in a Digitally Interconnected World," and a non-resident fellow at Stanford Law's Center for Internet & Society and at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy. Since 2011, McLaughlin has been a member of the commission on innovation of the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors.
From 2004-2009, McLaughlin was director of global public policy at Google, leading the company's work on issues like freedom of expression and censorship, surveillance and law enforcement, privacy, copyrights and trademarks, regulation of Internet and telecommunications networks, wireless radio spectrum, national security, trade policy, patent reform, and online child protection. McLaughlin built and managed a 50-person worldwide team based in Brussels, London, Paris, Madrid, Milan, Berlin, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Dublin, Brasilia, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Sydney, Ottawa, Washington, and San Francisco. McLaughlin as a co-lead on Google's Africa strategy and operations.
From 1999-2003, McLaughlin helped launch and manage ICANN, the Internet's technical coordinating organization, serving as vice president, chief policy officer, and chief financial officer. From 1998-2005, McLaughlin was a senior fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. In 2002-2003, McLaughlin taught a course on digital democracy at Harvard Law School while working on Internet and telecom law reform projects in a number of developing countries, including Ghana, Mongolia, Kenya, Afghanistan, and South Africa. He was a co-founder of CIPESA, a technology policy think-tank and advocacy center based at Makerere University in Uganda. Andrew served as a member of the board of directors of Bridges.org, an international technology policy not-for-profit based in Cape Town.
McLaughlin holds a B.A. in history from Yale University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
After clerking on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, McLaughlin started his career as a lawyer at Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C., where he focused on appellate and constitutional litigation. He was a member of the legal team that challenged the U.S. government's first Internet censorship law, resulting in the Supreme Court's landmark 1997 Internet free speech ruling in Reno vs. ACLU. From 1997-98, McLaughlin served as legal counsel in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In 2000, Time Magazine named McLaughlin one of its Digital Dozen. In 2001, he was named a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. He is a fellow of the Young Leaders Forum of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.