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 You are in: Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs > Bureau of Public Affairs > Bureau of Public Affairs: Electronic Information and Publications Office > Biographies > Biographies Listed Alphabetically by Last Name 
Picture of David A. Gross, BIOGRAPHY

David A. Gross,
Ambassador, U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy
Term of Appointment: 08/01/2001 to present

Ambassador David A. Gross has served since August 2001 as the U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy. He was nominated by President George W. Bush and unanimously confirmed by the Senate. As the U.S. Coordinator, Ambassador Gross has overall responsibility for the formulation and advocacy of international communications policy for the United States.

Ambassador Gross began his career in communications 25 years ago. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976 (BA in Economics) and receiving his law degree from Columbia University in 1979, Ambassador Gross joined the law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan. While at the law firm, he became a partner specializing in telecommunication issues. In 1994, he left the firm to become Washington Counsel for AirTouch Communications. AirTouch was the world's largest wireless telecommunications company with extensive interests in the United States, Europe, Asia, and elsewhere.

In 1999, AirTouch was acquired by Vodafone. In 2000, Ambassador Gross joined the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign as National Executive Director of Lawyers for Bush-Cheney.

Since joining the Department of State, Ambassador Gross has addressed the United Nations (UN) General Assembly and has led more U.S. delegations to major international telecommunication conferences than anyone in modern history, including the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) 2002 Plenipotentiary Conference (Marrakech, Morocco), the 2002 ITU World Telecommunication Development Conference (Istanbul, Turkey), the 2004 ITU World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (Florianópolis, Brazil), the 2006 ITU World Telecommunication Development Conference (Doha), and the 2006 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference (Antalya, Turkey). He also has led U.S. delegations to three APEC Ministerial Meetings in Shanghai, Lima, and Bangkok. Ambassador Gross led the U.S. Government participation in the multilateral preparatory work for both phases of the UN's "Heads of State" World Summit on the Information Society and had the honor of co-leading the U.S. delegation to the formal Summit both in Geneva in 2003 and in Tunis 2005. These were the largest U.N. Summits ever held with almost 20,000 delegates and a large number of Heads of States and government.

Ambassador Gross has been a member of the UN Information and Communications Technologies Task Force. He also has led interagency telecommunications delegations to many countries, conducted bilateral discussions at senior levels with representatives from more than 70 countries, and provided commercial and policy advocacy on behalf of U.S. companies in markets around the world. Ambassador Gross has had the honor to lecture at many colleges and universities around the world, including the United States, Canada, Qatar, the UAE, Yemen, Thailand, India, Israel, Bangladesh, France, Kazakhstan, Singapore, Rwanda, Vietnam, Egypt, and Pakistan.

For many years, Ambassador Gross has been active with various bar associations, including the Federal Communications Bar Association (in which he has twice been elected an officer and has often served as co-chair of various committees) and the International Bar Association (in which he has been vice-chair of the Communications Committee).



Released on January 9, 2007

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