Jim Kohlenberger is a national technology and innovation policy leader who has long been at the forefront of national policy initiatives to harness innovation to improve people’s lives as technology policy advisor to two U.S. Presidents, and through a series of national initiatives. In the Obama White House, he served as Chief of Staff for the Office of Science and Technology Policy where he helped the administration drive a transformative innovation policy agenda, advised the President’s national cybersecurity review, put our nation’s space program on a bolder trajectory, helped initiate the President’s mobile broadband initiative, and championed new presidential initiatives around scientific integrity and open data.
He also served 8 years in the Clinton White House as a Senior Domestic Policy Advisor where he helped formulate U.S. policy around innovation, technology and telecommunications and led major initiatives focused on closing the digital divide, establishing a national consumer privacy bill of rights, and advancing children’s online safety.
In addition to his role as a Legislative Assistant for California’s senior U.S. Senator, he also helped lead and advance several major national non-profit initiatives. For example, coming out of the Great Recession he helped launch and lead Jobs4America — a successful effort to create more than 100,000 broadband enabled jobs over 2 years. He later helped drive Education SuperHighway’s successful effort to extend gigabit broadband to every U.S. school, Wi-Fi to every classroom, and make the promise of digital learning available to 46.3 million students. He also worked with the Department of Transportation to help design, develop and launch an innovative SmartCities initiative to catalyze more than $500 million in private sector investments to pioneer innovative ways to improve people’s lives. He led a non-profit internet multi-stakeholder organization to harness consumer education to address online piracy and what had previously been one of the more challenging policy issues on the internet. In 2004, he helped launch and served as Executive Director for the Voice on the Net coalition to give voice to more people on the Internet.
He currently serves as President of JK Strategies, a public policy consulting practice, serves on the board of the Benton Institute for Broadband focused on expanding broadband access to ALL Americans, serves on the board of Measures for Justice to drive data-driven criminal justice transparency, accountability & reform, and serves as an advisor to EqualAI to reduce bias in artificial intelligence systems. In 2001, he received NASA’s Exceptional Service Medal for work advancing U.S. space policy.