Tech Institute Welcomes new Executive Director April Falcon Doss
April 1, 2021
Georgetown University Law Center is pleased to announce the appointment of April Falcon Doss as the new Executive Director of the Institute for Technology Law and Policy.
“I am delighted to welcome April Falcon Doss to Georgetown Law,” said Dean and Executive Vice President William M. Treanor. “Her deep expertise in technology law and policy and her extensive leadership experience will provide a steady foundation for the Institute’s important work.”
A privacy and cybersecurity expert with extensive public and private sector practice experience, Doss has held a number of government positions. She served as senior minority counsel for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Russia investigation, and she worked for over a decade at the National Security Agency on issues including data analytics oversight, information sharing, and foreign relations.
Prior to her work in government, Doss was an in-house counsel for Goucher College, where her portfolio included a wide range of education, labor, and other issues. Doss has also worked as a deputy public defender representing indigent clients in the criminal justice system.
Most recently, Doss has served as partner at Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr, where she chairs the cybersecurity and privacy practice group and co-chairs the congressional investigations practice group. Concurrently, she has been an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, where she has taught information privacy law and internet law. She is the author of the book CyberPrivacy: Who Has Your Data and Why You Should Care (2020) and also, in her capacity as a member of the Sedona Conference’s Working Group 11 on Cybersecurity and Privacy, a co-author of The Sedona Conference’s Incident Response Guide.
The Institute’s three faculty co-directors welcomed Doss to her new role.
“April brings a breadth of experience from government and private practice working on some of the most important tech law and policy issues of the day,” said Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Paul Ohm. “Her expertise, training, and energy will help the Georgetown Institute for Technology Law & Policy continue to thrive as a center for academic research, student development, and policy influence.”
Mark Claster Mamolen Professor of Law and Technology Julie Cohen agreed, noting that “April brings both extensive real-world experience and deep intellectual curiosity to her new role at Georgetown.”
“I am eager to welcome April to the Institute,” said Professor of Law Tanina Rostain. “She brings years of experience in private and government practice covering a range of areas at the intersection of technology, law, and policy. Students at the Law Center will benefit from her terrific teaching skills. The Institute will benefit from her deep understanding of the cutting edge issues raised by rapidly emerging technologies. I look forward to the exciting initiatives she will launch.”
Georgetown Law’s Institute for Tech Law & Policy provides a central hub for discussions at the intersection of technology, law and public policy. It is dedicated to training the next generation of lawyers and lawmakers with a deep understanding of technology and policy, and to providing a central forum for policymakers, academics, advocates, and technologists to study and discuss the most pressing issues in technology law today.
Among other programming, the Institute offers public convenings and workshops; training for Congressional staff on key tech policy issues; and original research on topics including platform governance, algorithmic fairness, promoting an open internet, privacy-protecting technologies, and the use of technology as a tool to address problems in the justice system. It coordinates the leading academic program in the country for technology law and policy, with over 65 courses and 17 full-time faculty teaching in the cluster.
See announcement on the Georgetown University Law Center main page.