Susan Ness

Susan Ness is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, where she focuses on fostering greater transatlantic cooperation on digital policy. The founder of Susan Ness Strategies, a tech- and media-policy consulting firm, she is a frequent convenor and speaker on digital governance policy.

Ness also is a distinguished fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, where she currently leads a project on ‘modularity’—a way to better align transatlantic digital governance despite dissimilar legal frameworks and laws. Earlier, she convened the Transatlantic High-Level Working Group on Content Moderation and Freedom of Expression, which published fourteen working papers and a final report.

Previously, she was affiliated with the German Marshall Fund, focusing on transatlantic digital governance and human rights, and with the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, where she worked on transatlantic trade and technology policy as well as convened the annual school’s Global Conference on Women in the Boardroom.

From 1994 to 2001, she served as a member of the US Federal Communications Commission, where she played a leading role on spectrum policy and regulation of global communications, championed industry competition, emerging digital technologies, and internet connection for schools and libraries.

She is a member of the board of Vital Voices Global Partnership, a nongovernmental organization that supports women leaders who are improving the world, and she serves on the steering committee of the World Economic Forum Project on Advancing Global Digital Content Safety. Previously, she served on the board of a broadcasting and digital-media company and on the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, where she twice was elected vice chair of the board.

Ness earned a JD from Boston College Law School and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her articles with Chris Riley on modularity were published in the Hill, Lawfare Blog, and the Bled (Slovenia) Strategic Times.