Executive Director
Alissa Cooper is the Executive Director of the Knight-Georgetown Institute (KGI). She is a recognized leader in the development of global Internet standards, policy, and governance. Alissa has served in a variety of roles in the tech industry, including Chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the world’s premier Internet standards organization. She led the IETF through significant transitions related to Internet security and encryption, network performance, privacy, and real-time voice and video. She previously served as the chair of the IANA Stewardship Coordination Group, which delivered the technical plan that allowed the U.S. Department of Commerce to transfer oversight of Internet governance to the global multistakeholder community.
Prior to joining KGI, Alissa spent a decade at Cisco Systems in senior engineering and executive roles, including Vice President of Technology Standards and Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Technology Policy. She played a central part in shaping Cisco’s approach to technology standardization, public policy, and privacy across the company’s networking, security, and collaboration businesses. Alissa was the first woman in Cisco history to be promoted to Fellow, the company’s highest engineering distinction.
Prior to joining Cisco, Alissa served as the Chief Computer Scientist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, where she was a leading public interest advocate and technologist focused on privacy and net neutrality. Alissa holds a D.Phil from the Oxford Internet Institute and M.S. and B.S. degrees in computer science from Stanford University. She currently serves on the board of The Tor Project.
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Governments around the world are adopting online age assurance requirements of different kinds, reshaping how digital services are accessed by adults and youth. KGI’s latest report provides a technical assessment of how age assurance systems work in practice and examines their accuracy, circumvention resistance, availability, and privacy implications.
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On September 2, US District Court Judge Amit Mehta issued an opinion that many in the tech industry had been waiting on for more than 15 years: a ruling about how to rectify Google’s maintenance of its illegal monopoly in online search. The most consequential aspect of the opinion is that the remedies will not meaningfully address the conduct at the center of the case: Google paying distributors like Apple, Samsung, and Mozilla tens of billions of dollars per year to lock in Google Search as the default on nearly every mobile phone and across much of the desktop browser market.
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A new report by the Knight-Georgetown Institute shows how the US government’s proposed Google Chrome divestiture is technically feasible. The in-depth engineering assessment shows how an independent Chrome browser can thrive outside of Google and compete with Chrome’s major rivals.
