FCC Chair Announces Key Appointments

Newly-confirmed FCC chair Julius Genachowski has named a 32-year Navy veteran to head the agency’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, the division that handles much of the FCC’s matters pertaining to public safety comm centers. He also named two deputy chiefs for the Bureau. Rear Admiral (ret.) Jamie Barnett left the Navy as a reserve officer in 2008. He was last in the regular Navy as a Dep. Commander at the Pentagon for Naval Education and Training. He spent the last two years as a Sr. Research Fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. He also was in private law practice while serving in the Navy Reserve. Genachowski named FCC veteran David Furth as Deputy Chief of the Bureau. Furth joined the FCC in 1992 and joined the Bureau when it was formed in 2006. He’s been acting chief of the Bureau since last January. Also named as a deputy chief was Jennifer Manner, most recently a principal at ZComm Strategies LLC, a telecom policy advisory company. She also was senior counsel to FCC commissioner Kathleen Abernathy, and worked at Worldcom Inc.