Washington, D.C. — The Center for American Progress today announced that Adam Conner will lead the organization’s newly created technology policy team as its inaugural vice president. In an op-ed published today by Morning Consult, Conner discussed his decision to lead CAP’s work around technology policy.
“The challenges posed to our society and our economy by the technology sector are vast and growing by the day. Today, the lack of regulation that can protect consumers, the power of tech to influence our democracy, and the growing challenge of radicalization on platforms all make abundantly clear why we as progressives need a bold tech agenda,” said CAP President and CEO Neera Tanden. “Adam has had a close-up view of tech for more than a decade and knows how the industry must be reformed to help, rather than hurt, our society in the United States and worldwide. He will be a vital asset to CAP as the vice president of our new Technology Policy team.”
“As someone who pioneered politics on social media, after 2016 it was impossible to not reexamine the role technology had played in bringing us to this moment,” Conner wrote in his op-ed. “Many of us who worked in tech early on went from upstarts and dreamers to watching our companies exercise vast influence on our economy and democracy in such a short timespan that we barely comprehended what was happening. This was just as true of the federal government. But like us, the federal government needs to snap out of it. The time for catching up is long past, and government is falling behind exponentially further with every passing day.”
Conner has spent the past decade working at the intersection of technology, politics, policy, and elections as the first Washington, D.C., employee for several Silicon Valley companies. He was a spring 2018 resident fellow at the Harvard University Institute of Politics, where he lead a study group entitled “Platforms, Networks, and New Power Technology’s Impact on Politics, Policy, and Elections,” focused on the rise of technology companies and their effect on politics and democracy.
Most recently, he was the first D.C. employee for Slack Technologies, the fast-growing workplace communications startup, leading their engagement with federal, state, and local governments. Prior to that, Conner was vice president of Brigade, a civic engagement platform co-founded by Sean Parker.
In 2007, he founded Facebook’s Washington, D.C., office. He spent seven years on the Facebook Privacy and Public Policy team, where he created the company’s government and political outreach efforts and directed the company’s election efforts. His congressional and campaign experience includes the U.S. House Committee on Rules, former Gov. Mark Warner’s (D-VA) Forward Together PAC, and the John Kerry for President campaign.
Conner is a graduate of the George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs and serves on the school’s National Council and is also on the board of the Roosevelt Institute. He hails from Los Alamos, New Mexico.
For more information, contact Allison Preiss at [email protected] or 202-478-6331.