Jessica Rosenworcel looks back at her term as FCC chair

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A Q&A with Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. When President Biden nominated her to lead the FCC in 2021, she was the first woman confirmed by the US Senate to serve as a permanent chair of the agency. "It was the height of the pandemic. When I was sworn in as chairwoman, I had to stand outside on the street because we had limited access to the building. You know, it was a strange moment in our history. But it was also a moment that proved just how important it is to close our nation’s digital divide. We all remember that during the pandemic, we were all told to go home, hunker down and live our lives online. One thing that this agency saw very clearly is that there are a lot of people who are not able to get the service necessary to do that. And so I’m really proud of the programs that we ran, like the Affordable Connectivity Program. We ran it and we got 23 million households connected all across the country. These are low-income households with young schoolchildren and elderly people who were having a hard time getting online. We brought more people online through this affordability program than any other single initiative, I believe, in our nation’s history."


Jessica Rosenworcel ’97 looks back at her term as FCC chair