Adonis Hoffman
Adonis Hoffman, Esq. is chairman and CEO of Business in the Public Interest, and Adjunct Professor of Communication, Culture & Technology at Georgetown University. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of The Media Institute, co-chairman of the External Advisory Council of Nielsen Media, editor and publisher of Inside the FCC, and a contributor to The Hill newspaper. He provides strategic advisory counsel to organizations and investors on compliance, risk, M&A and reputation management, as well as regulatory and public policy developments. Mr. Hoffman is a lawyer, business advisor and recognized expert on media, communications, advertising and public policy, with over 30 years of high-level legal, government, and international experience.
He has worked with CEOs, corporate boards, U.S. policymakers, foreign leaders, trade associations, institutional investors, embassies, and international organizations on a range of global and domestic issues. He is considered a leading voice on media and communications law and policy, especially FCC and FTC regulations, and provides commentary and insight to policymakers, the news media, and investors. Hoffman served from 2013 – 2015 as Chief of Staff and Senior Legal Advisor at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), working with the FCC Chairman, Commissioners and senior staff on key communications policy matters, including Net Neutrality; media ownership; broadcast and wireless spectrum; wireless and broadcast auctions; retransmission agreements; privacy enforcement; consumer protection, TCPA, and several mega-mergers in the media, broadband and internet sectors, including Comcast – TWC – Charter; ATT-DirecTV, and over a dozen broadcast and telecom transactions.
He served earlier at the FCC from 1998-2000 as Deputy Chief of the Cable Bureau and Policy Advisor to the FCC Chairman, where he worked on the ATT- Media One merger and the AOL – Time Warner merger, and was appointed chair of the Interagency Task Force on Advertising Practices. From 2000-2010, Hoffman worked as senior vice president and counsel at the American Association of Advertising Agencies (the 4As), responsible for legislative, regulatory and legal matters, and represented the advertising industry before Congress, the FTC, and federal courts. Hoffman helped lead the advertising industry’s self-regulatory initiatives, including food marketing, advertising to children, and online consumer privacy initiatives. Mr. Hoffman served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1990-1993) (1980-1984) in senior legal and policy positions, including committee counsel and subcommittee staff director for the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He was later appointed a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and senior fellow at the World Policy Institute.
His work in constitutional and electoral reform took him to thirty countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He previously worked as Managing Director with Capitol Exchange Corporation; associate attorney at Hopkins & Sutter; and commercial banking at Bank of America. He established and chaired the American Adonis E. Hoffman, Esq. www.adonishoffman.com Business Leadership Institute; consulted with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and served as a member of the National Advertising Review Board (NARB). Hoffman is a Contributor to The Hill newspaper, and his articles have been published in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Broadcasting & Cable, The Washington Times, Multichannel News, National Journal and Foreign Policy. He has appeared on CNBC, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, PBS, Voice of America, Canadian Broadcasting, and numerous international networks, and has been widely quoted in national news media, including AP, Reuters, Time, and USA Today. Hoffman’s Wall Street Journal article on the TCPA was cited in the Petitioner’s Brief in Campbell-Ewald v. Gomez in the U.S. Supreme Court, 2015.
Hoffman is the author of Doing Good–the New Rules of Corporate Responsibility, Conscience and Character (2010). Mr. Hoffman earned an A.B. from Princeton University and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. He is admitted to practice law before the District of Columbia. Court of Appeals; the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia; the U.S. Court of International Trade and the United States Supreme Court.
Johanna Schneider
Johanna Schneider has played a key role in successfully managing communications moving from reporter and anchor to top posts in government–Congress, the Executive Branch–and in the business arena.
Ms. Schneider is currently a public policy and communications consultant. She was most recently the Managing Director and U.S. Market Leader in Washington D.C. for the worldwide Public Relations firm, Burson Marsteller. (now Burson Cohn Wolfe) In this role, she led the Washington D.C. practices.
Formerly she held the position of Executive Director-External Relations of the Business Roundtable, an organization of top Chief Executive Officers of global companies. Recently cited as “the most influential chief executive lobbying group in the U.S.” by the Financial Times, Business Roundtable members are CEO’s, advocating for a vigorous, dynamic global economy.
Formerly she held the position of Executive Director-External Relations of the Business Roundtable, an organization of top Chief Executive Officers of global companies. Recently cited as “the most influential chief executive lobbying group in the U.S.” by the Financial Times, Business Roundtable members are CEO’s, advocating for a vigorous, dynamic global economy.
At the Roundtable, she created The Partnership for Disaster Relief to improve and leverage corporate response to catastrophic disasters. This effort won the Gold Sabre Award. In addition, she conceived and launched the highly regarded, CEO Economic Outlook survey. Her work on public policy garnered the top award for Associations, the Silver Sabre Award in 2010, and Bronze Sabre Award in 2007. In addition, the Roundtable was cited as one of the top ten Trade Associations to harness digital media and social networking.
Before joining the Roundtable, Ms. Schneider was the Senior Advisor for Media Relations to the Director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Bernadine Healy. At NIH, Schneider played a major role in launching the groundbreaking Women’s Health Initiative, the largest clinical trial ever undertaken in the U.S., focusing on the major causes of death and disability in women. She also managed cDNA patenting, ethics in Science, and AIDS research communications.
Prior to her service at NIH, Schneider served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs to Labor Secretaries Elizabeth Dole and Lynn Martin. At the Department of Labor she orchestrated the groundbreaking study on women and minorities difficulty in moving up the career ladder, titled the Glass Ceiling Initiative. She also handled the successful resolution of the Pittston Coal Strike, a historic dispute where more than 17,700 mineworkers in seven states went on strike over labor issues. She also managed pension portability.
Filling one of the top jobs in the U.S. Congress, Ms. Schneider also served as the Leadership Press Secretary to the House Republican Leader, Bob Michel (R-IL). From l984 to l989, she managed the Leadership press operation, coordinated House and Senate press responses and served as media liaison to the White House.
In addition, Schneider served as Press Secretary to Congresswoman Lynn Martin (R-IL), the highest-ranking woman in House Republican Leadership.
Schneider also worked as a production assistant at CBS Network News in Washington and worked as a television reporter and anchor at a CBS affiliate (WIFR-TV) in Illinois.
Schneider graduated from Southern Illinois University in 1976 with a degree in Radio and Television
from the College of Mass Communications. She is originally from Rockford, Illinois.
Ms. Schneider is the Immediate Past Chairman of The Seminar, a convening of the most prestigious Communications officials from the Fortune 500 and the Global 1000. In addition, she is the Treasurer of the National Press Foundation Board and is a former Board of Trustee and member of the Arthur W. Page Society, Former Board member of the Center for Corporate Citizenship at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, and a former Board member of USAID’s Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid.
Amy Longsworth
Amy Longsworth is a strategy consultant and Director of the Boston Green Ribbon Commission (GRC), a group of 35 business, philanthropic, and civic leaders who support the implementation of Boston’s Climate Action Plan. The GRC focuses on strategies to de-carbonize energy – Carbon Free Boston — and build climate resiliency – Climate Ready Boston. To achieve these goals, the GRC convenes leaders, incubates ideas, produces information, and supports a network of businesses, institutions, and agencies working across sectors.
The GRC is operationally organized around sector-based working groups in Higher Education, Health Care, and Commercial Real Estate. In 2017 Amy led the formation of a fourth working group comprising Boston’s cultural institutions – spanning from the Museum of Fine Arts to the Red Sox. As Boston becomes “wetter, hotter, and saltier,” the emerging climate agenda of the Cultural Institutions Working Group includes a range of issues such as collections preservation, building resiliency, energy efficiency, safety, communication to audiences, and relevant programming. Moreover, the City of Boston has set a goal for carbon neutrality that will require significant changes in buildings operations and energy use.
Amy was previously a Managing Director in PwC’s Sustainable Business Solutions practice; Vice President Corporate Programs at The Nature Conservancy; and a founding Partner at Viridis Strategy Group, a corporate sustainability strategy consulting firm. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University and Harvard Business School. She serves on the Board of the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA. After 31 years in Washington, DC, she now lives in Somerville, MA.
Mark Williams
Mark Williams is the Founder of The Inclusion Channel and Identity Post. He has provided consultation for a wide variety of clients, including Exxon Corporation, AT & T, the US Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration, Avon Cosmetics, Colgate Palmolive, the Agency for International Development, the Central Intelligence Agency, Microsoft, Harvard Medical School, Cisco Systems, Office Depot, Microsoft, EDS, the Food and Drug Administration, the Social Security Administration and dozens of other Global 500 companies, associations and educational institutions.
Mark is a highly regarded thought leader, consultant, coach, public speaker, and author of five books, including the best-selling book entitled: “The 10 Lenses, Their Guide to Living and Working in a Multicultural World.” Mark is known for his unique ability to integrate conceptual frameworks, research, and diagnostics with web-based tools and multimedia in his facilitation work with organizations, teams and small groups. Mark has conducted extensive research in the field of identity and diversity with leading firms such as Gallup, Zogby, Harris and Survey USA. Mark holds a Master’s degree in Organizational Psychology from the American University.