New Staff at FCC

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the appointment of Joel Gurin as Chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau and Thomas Wyatt as Chief of the Office of Workplace Diversity. Stuart Benjamin will be joining the Commission as the agency's first Distinguished Scholar in Residence. He will reside in the Office of Strategic Planning and will work on spectrum reform, First Amendment issues, and long-term strategy.

1) Gurin has a diverse background combining nonprofit leadership, print and Web publishing, and expertise in consumer issues. He most recently served as Acting President of NARSAD; as Acting Editor-in-Chief for State of the USA; and as Senior Vice President of Rodale Interactive. Prior to that, Mr. Gurin was Executive Vice President of Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, for almost a decade. He launched and grew Consumer Reports' Web site, the world's largest information-based paid subscription site.

2) Wyatt has spent much of his career at the FCC extensively involved in complaint and other consumer-related activities. Most recently, he served as Deputy Chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau. Mr. Wyatt also served in that Bureau's predecessor, the Consumer Information Bureau, as Associate Bureau Chief for Operations and was Senior Counsel for Disabilities Enforcement in the Enforcement Bureau. He began his career at the FCC in 1984 as a staff attorney in the former Mass Media Bureau. He joined the Common Carrier Bureau in 1986 where he served as Chief of the Formal Complaints and Investigations Branch and, later, Associate Chief of the Enforcement Division.

3) Professor Benjamin is on leave from Duke Law School, where he is the Douglas B. Maggs Professor of Law. He specializes in telecommunications law, the First Amendment, and administrative law. Before teaching law, Professor Benjamin clerked for Justice David H. Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court; worked as an attorney-advisor in the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice; worked as an associate with Professor Laurence Tribe; and served as a staff attorney for the Legal Resources Centre in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.