Archives: Team Showcase

Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he is also head of the Global Economics and Management group and chair of the Sloan Fellows MBA Program Committee. He cofounded and currently leads the popular Global Entrepreneurship Lab (GLAB) course – over the past 16 years, MBA students in GLAB have worked on more than 500 projects with start-up companies around the world.

He also works closely with Joi Ito, head of MIT’s Media Lab, on the Digital Currency Initiative (DCI). Specifically, Johnson supervises research projects related to blockchain technology, and teaches a course (with Rob Ali, Michael Casey, and Neha Narula) on this fast-developing business sector. Johnson is not an investor in Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency-related startups, but he works closely with MIT students and others who want to build better companies.

Denis McDonough is a visiting senior fellow in Carnegie’s Technology and International Affairs Program. Previously, he served as White House chief of staff for President Obama’s second term, managing the four thousand member White House staff, as well as cabinet secretaries and agency leaders. He provided strategic advice to the president on the most significant domestic policy, national security, and management issues facing the federal government and enforced plans and accountability for performance and goals, maintaining the Obama administration’s reputation for effective, ethical operation. He planned and coordinated efforts to recruit and retain key talent—including an unprecedented expansion of technology experts, engineers, and content generators within the White House and across the federal government.

Prior to his role as chief of staff, McDonough served as White House deputy national security adviser from September 2010 to February 2013. In this position, he chaired the National Security Council’s Deputies Committee, leading a multiagency team to address complex national security challenges, including crisis management as well as policy decisions related to the Iran nuclear negotiations, strategic arms reductions talks with Russia, the United States re-balance to Asia, the Afghanistan surge, and the Iraq drawdown. Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, McDonough served as senior foreign policy adviser for Obama for America.

McDonough received his B.A., summa cum laude, from St. John’s University in Minnesota and his M.S. from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He lives in Maryland with his wife and three children.

Philip A. Miscimarra is the former Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and is a partner in the labor and employment law practice of Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP.  Phil leads the Morgan Lewis NLRB special appeals practice and is co-leader of Morgan Lewis Workforce Change, which manages all employment, labor, benefits, and related issues arising from mergers, acquisitions, startups, workforce reductions, other types of business restructuring and technological change.  He is also a Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and the Wharton Center for Human Resources.

Mr. Miscimarra was named Chairman of the NLRB by President Donald J. Trump on April 24, 2017, after previously serving as Acting Chairman and a Board member.  He was appointed to the NLRB by President Barack Obama on April 9, 2013 and was approved unanimously by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on May 22, 2013. Phil was confirmed by voice vote in the United States Senate on July 30, 2013 and served in a term that commenced August 7, 2013 and expired on December 16, 2017.

Mr. Miscimarra is the author or co-author of several books involving labor law issues, including The NLRB and Managerial Discretion: Subcontracting, Relocations, Closings, Sales, Layoffs, and Technological Change (2d ed. 2010) (by Miscimarra, Turner, Friedman, Callahan, Conrad, Lignowski and Scroggins); The NLRB and Secondary Boycotts (3d ed. 2002) (by Miscimarra, Berkowitz, Wiener and Ditelberg); and Government Protection of Employees Involved in Mergers and Acquisitions (1989 and 1997 supp.) (by Northrup and Miscimarra); and other publications.  He has also testified on labor and employment law issues in the United States Congress.

Mr. Miscimarra received his Juris Doctor from the University of Pennsylvania Law School; an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School; and a BA degree, summa cum laude, from Duquesne University.

Lisa O. Monaco is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at NYU School of Law. Monaco most recently served as assistant to the President for homeland security and counterterrorism in the White House. As President Obama’s homeland security advisor, she coordinated policy development and crisis response to terrorist attacks, cyber incidents, and public health emergencies and natural disasters.

Prior to her White House appointment, Monaco spent 15 years in various positions at the Department of Justice (DOJ), including as Assistant Attorney General for National Security, where she established the first nationwide network of national security cyber specialists and led a division of more than 300 lawyers responsible for national security cases and policy. Before leading the national security division, Lisa was principal associate deputy attorney general—the deputy attorney general’s primary advisor on criminal policy, law enforcement, national security, and civil litigation matters. She also served for three years as counsel and chief of staff to FBI Director Robert Mueller III, and before that, worked as an assistant US attorney, including as a member of the Enron Task Force. She began her legal career as a law clerk to Judge Jane Roth of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Monaco is the recipient of the Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service—the DOJ’s highest honor—as well as the Edmund J. Randolph Award, awarded by the attorney general in recognition of outstanding contributions to the DOJ’s mission. She is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Chicago Law School.

John Podesta served as Chair of Hillary for America during the 2018 election cycle. Prior to joining Hillary Clinton’s campaign, he served as Counselor to President Barack Obama.  His duties included overseeing climate change and energy policy. In 2008, he served as co-chair of President Obama’s transition team, where he coordinated the priorities of the incoming administration’s agenda, oversaw the development of its policies, and spearheaded its appointments of major cabinet secretaries and political appointees. He is the former Chair of the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Center for American Progress and the Center for American Progress Action Fund.  Prior to founding the Center in 2003, Podesta served as White House chief of staff to President William J. Clinton.

Dr. Thomas E. Price, an orthopaedic surgeon, served as the 23^rd Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).  He brought to the Department a lifetime of service and a dedication to advancing the quality of health care in America – both as a physician and policymaker.

Dr. Price was elected to four terms in the Georgia State Senate – during which time he was chosen by his colleagues to serve as Senate Minority Whip and later as the first Republican Senate Majority Leader in the history of Georgia. He also served as the U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 6^th Congressional District from northern suburban Atlanta. He held this office from 2005-2017.

Dr. Price is currently a Board member for a number of entities in the private and non-profit arena, a consultant or advisor to numerous companies and is a much sought after public speaker.

Taylor Reynolds is the Technology Policy Director of the MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative (IPRI). At IPRI, Reynolds helps to develop the field of Internet policy and assists policymakers in addressing cybersecurity and Internet public policy issues.

Carol Rose is the Executive Director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, a nonpartisan organization that integrates litigation, legislation, traditional and social media, and community-based movement-building to promote civil rights and defend civil liberties.  A journalist and lawyer, Rose in 2013 launched the ACLU of Massachusetts’ “Technology for Liberty & Justice for All” initiative, a $7-milllion program focused on the civil liberties implications and civil rights promise of new technology. The Technology for Liberty project, which included a collaboration among data scientists, litigators, and organizers led, in 2017 and 2018, to the dismissal of more than 30,000 wrongful convictions in Massachusetts – the single largest dismissal of wrongful convictions in history.

Rose is a frequent speaker on technology and civil liberties issues, including the 2018 AAAI/ACM Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society; the 2016 Forum on Data Privacy hosted by the Internet Policy Research Initiative at MIT; and the 2014 White House conference on big data privacy at MIT. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence.  She is a graduate of Stanford University (BSc 1983), the London School of Economics (MSc 1985), and Harvard Law School (JD 1996).

Daniela Rus is the Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT. Rus’ research interests are in robotics, artificial intelligence, and data science.

The focus of her work is developing the science and engineering of autonomy, toward the long-term objective of enabling a future with machines pervasively integrated into the fabric of life, supporting people with cognitive and physical tasks. Her research addresses some of the gaps between where robots are today and the promise of pervasive robots: increasing the ability of machines to reason, learn, and adapt to complex tasks in human-centered environments, developing intuitive interfaces between robots and people, and creating the tools for designing and fabricating new robots quickly and efficiently. The applications of this work are broad and include transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, construction, monitoring the environment, underwater exploration, smart cities, medicine, and in-home tasks such as cooking.

Rus serves as the Associate Director of MIT’s Quest for Intelligence Core, and as Director of the Toyota-CSAIL Joint Research Center, whose focus is the advancement of AI research and its applications to intelligent vehicles. She is a member of the Toyota Research Institute advisory board.

Rus is a Class of 2002 MacArthur Fellow, a fellow of ACM, AAAI and IEEE, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the recipient of the 2017 Engelberger Robotics Award from the Robotics Industries Association. She earned her PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University.