Dorothy Robyn is a member of ITIF’s board. She is a public policy expert who writes and consults on transportation, energy, and telecommunications policy, and a nonresident senior fellow with ITIF's Center for Clean Energy Innovation and Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy.
Dr. Robyn served in the Obama administration as deputy undersecretary of Defense for Installations & Environment, where she had DoD-wide oversight of U.S. military bases around the world (2009-2012), and as commissioner of public buildings at the U.S. General Services Administration (2012-2014).
From 1993-2001, she was a special assistant to the president for economic policy on the staff of the White House National Economic Council, where she coordinated policy issues related to aviation, aerospace, defense, telecommunications, and science and technology. Her role in preventing the destruction of the Iridium satellite system following its 1999 bankruptcy is recounted in John Bloom’s award-winning 2016 book Eccentric Orbits: the Iridium Story.
Dr. Robyn previously was an assistant professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government; a principal with The Brattle Group, an economic consultancy; and a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution.
She is a member of two National Research Council standing boards on energy and infrastructure, respectively; the World Resources Institute’s Global Leadership Council; and the board of directors of the nonprofit U.S. Ignite.
Dr. Robyn is the author of Braking the Special Interests: Trucking Deregulation and the Politics of Policy Reform (University of Chicago Press) and Toward an Evolutionary Regime for Spectrum Governance: Licensed or Unrestricted Entry (Brookings Press) with William J. Baumol.
She has a B.A. from Southern Illinois University and an M.P.P. and Ph.D. in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley.