"Rethinking Governance in the Age of MySpace.com": Featured Panelists

danah boyd, Graduate Student Fellow, USC Annenberg Center for Communication
danah boyd is a doctoral candidate in the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley and a fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Communications. Her dissertation focuses on how youth engage in networked publics like MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, and Xanga. danah received a bachelor's degree in computer science from Brown University and a master's degree in sociable media from MIT Media Lab. She has worked as an ethnographer and social media researcher for various corporations, including Intel, Tribe.net, Google, and Yahoo!

Geoffrey Cowan, Dean, USC Annenberg School for Communication
Geoffrey Cowan has served as dean of the USC Annenberg School since 1996 and holds the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership. He teaches courses in journalism, holds a joint appointment in the USC Gould School of Law and directs the Annenberg School's Center on Communication Leadership. For more than 30 years, Cowan has been an important force in almost every facet of the communication world — as a public interest lawyer, academic administrator, best-selling author and award-winning teacher, playwright, television producer and government official.

Jay Harris, Director, Center for the Study of Journalism and Democracy, USC Annenberg School for Communication
Jay T. Harris has held the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Journalism and Democracy at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, since October 2002. From 1994 to 2001 Harris was chairman and publisher of the San Jose Mercury News. During his seven years as publisher the paper rose to national prominence for the quality of its journalism. He also made the Mercury News a national pioneer in multi-cultural publishing, leading the drive to broaden and deepen the newspaper's service to a multi-lingual readership, and business community, in one of the nation's most diverse cities.

David Janssen, Chief Administrative Officer, Los Angeles County
David E. Janssen, a public administrator with more than 30 years of experience at the local and state government level, is Chief Administrative Officer for the County of Los Angeles. With a population of nearly 10 million, Los Angeles County has more residents than any other county in the nation. Mr. Janssen came to Los Angeles following a 13-year career with the County of San Diego, where he served as chief administrative officer for four years and assistant chief administrative officer for nine years. He has held several executive-level positions with the State of California.

J. Clark Kelso, Chief Information Officer, State of California
J. Clark Kelso has served as the Chief Information Officer for the State of California since 2002. He was recognized by "Government Technology" as one of the 25 Top Chief Information Officers in the public sector for 2004. He has worked closely with the leadership in the California Senate and Assembly and within the Judicial and Executive Branches on constitutional amendments, legislation, and rules of court to improve and reform the California Judiciary and the administration of justice. Dr. Kelso also serves on the faculty of the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law.

Daniel A. Mazmanian, Director, USC Judith and John Bedrosian Center on Governance and the Public Enterprise
In addition to directing the Bedrosian Center, Daniel Mazmanian serves as the Bedrosian Professor of Governance and is a Visiting Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California in San Francisco. Dr. Mazmanian previously served as Dean of SPPD and Dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan. Prior to that, he directed the Center for Politics and Economics at the Claremont Graduate University. An expert on policy implementation, he has authored numerous books on governance and related issues.

Sunne McPeak, President and CEO, California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF)
Sunne Wright McPeak is the President and CEO of CETF, which was created as part of the California Public Utilities Commission's approval of the merger of SBC and AT&T and the merger of Verizon and MCI. The Fund is working to extend Internet broadband services to underrepresented communities in rural and urban California. In November 2003, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Ms. McPeak to serve as Secretary of the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, California's largest government agency. She also has served as president and CEO of the Bay Area Council as well as in many other executive-level government and civic positions.

Phil Noble, Founder, PoliticsOnline
Phil Noble is recognized globally as one of the leading experts on uses of the Internet in the civic sector – in politics, media, government and public affairs. In 1996, he founded PoliticsOnline, the premier international company providing news, tools and strategies for the civic sector globally. Mr. Noble has authored two books including the first-ever "Guide to the Internet and Politics" and numerous articles on the Internet, media, communications and politics for U.S. and international publications. In 1979, he founded Phil Noble and Associates, a political and public affairs consulting firm.

John A. Pérez, Political Director, United Food and Commercial Workers
John A. Pérez has spent a decade and a half as a union organizer and political operative, most recently in his current capacity as Political Director of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Union Local 324. He was appointed to the Board of Commissioners of the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles in 2005. Immediately prior to his present post, Mr. Pérez was the Political Director for the California Labor Federation AFL-CIO. In addition to his work on behalf of UFCW, John serves as an elected member of the Democratic National Committee.

Monroe Price, Director, Project for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
Monroe Price is the director of the Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research in London and Chair of the Center for Media and Communication Studies of the Central European University in Budapest. He has served as dean of Cardozo School of Law, professor at UCLA Law School, and founding director of the Program in Comparative Media Law and Policy at Wolfson College, Oxford. He is the author of "Media and Sovereignty: The Global Information Revolution and Its Challenge to State Power" and "Television, The Public Sphere and National Identity."

Joe Trippi, President, Joe Trippi and Associates
Joe Trippi is an MSNBC elections analyst, Harvard University fellow and heads the Washington, DC political consultancy, Trippi and Associates. He served as the National Campaign Manager for Howard Dean's presidential campaign in 2004, and used online technology to organize what became the largest grassroots movement in presidential politics. He has worked on numerous high profile political campaigns including campaigns for Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, and Richard Gephardt. He is the author of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet and the Overthrow of Everything."

Giorgio Vanzini, Senior Director of Government and Education Programs in the Public Sector, Microsoft Corporation
Giorgio Vanzini is responsible for delivering dedicated, world-wide government and education programs across Microsoft’s business divisions and assisting in developing and coordinating forward-looking product enhancements to address Public Sector specific customer requirements. Mr. Vanzini joined Microsoft in 1992 and has held a variety of marketing, product development and management roles. Previously, he worked at various start up companies as well as Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).

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