WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) announced today that Christine Kurth will become the new Republican Staff Director for the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.  Kurth will replace Lisa Sutherland, who currently serves as Republican Staff Director until early March. Kurth interned for Senator Stevens during the summers of 1988 and 1991 and began working on the Hill in 2000.

 

 

Kurth’s previous position was Deputy Staff Director for the Committee where she was responsible for coordinating the legislative work for the Committee focusing on communications policy.  She was actively involved in a review of our nation’s telecommunications laws in preparation of the Committee’s revisit of the 1996 Telecom Act and was also heavily involved in drafting the digital television transition legislation (which was signed into law in 2006).

 

After growing up in Anchorage, Alaska, Kurth left the state to attend college at Valparaiso University in Indiana. She graduated from Valparaiso University magna cum laude and went on to graduate cum laude with her Juris Doctor from Valparaiso University School of Law. She then returned to Alaska for a two-year federal clerkship for Judge James Singleton who was Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court of Alaska at the time. 

 

After clerking for Judge Singleton, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a trial attorney for the Contempt Division of the National Labor Relations Board and during part of her tenure at the NLRB, was detailed to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia as a Special Assistant United States Attorney.