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Biden Transition Team PACKED with Big Tech Employees

Posted on 11 November 2020

It’s no secret that Silicon Valley skews sharply left, and former Vice President Joe Biden has added dozens of current and former Big Tech employees to his transition team.  Biden’s transition team already hosts at least 16 current and former Silicon Valley employees — including former staffers from Facebook and Twitter.   The Biden-Harris transition website divides its transition team into three categories: “Volunteers,” “Full-Time Transition Employees” and “Detailees.”  The Biden-Harris transition team also included employees from Amazon, Lyft, Uber, AirBnB and LinkedIn. Many of these individuals also had ties to the Obama administration.  Former  “Facebook attorney [Jessica Hertz] will manage the transition team's ethics questions,” according to Protocol. Hertz also served as the principal deputy counsel for Biden while he served as the Vice President.  Carlos Monje previously worked for Twitter as the platform’s public policy director. Monje joined Biden’s transition team several months ago, but Protocol noted that “it's unclear what his role may be.”  Mark Schwartz is listed as an Enterprise Strategist at Amazon Web Services. The Biden-Harris campaign transition team counted Schwartz under the Office of Management and Budget.  Tom Sullivan works for Amazon.com, and Protocol said that he is “Amazon’s director of tax planning.” The Biden-Harris transition website included Sullivan as a volunteer under The Department of State. Head of U.S. Public Policy for LinkedIn, Nicole Isaac leads partnerships for LinkedIn’s Economic Graph. Isaac was included under the Department of the Treasury. Nicole Wong is currently a Senior Advisor at Albright Stonebridge Group (ASG), which “helps develop and implement business and risk management strategies in every part of the world,” according to the organization’s website. Before joining ASG, Wong served as the Legal Director of Products at Twitter and Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Google. She was appointed as the Deputy Chief Technology Officer for the United States in 2013, according to ASG. The Biden-Harris transition website listed Wong under the Office of Science and Technology Policy.  Divya Kumaraiah is a “strategy and program lead” for AirBnB, according to CNBC. Kumaraiah was listed under the Office of Management and Budget.  AirBnB’s partnerships & events manager, Clare Gallagher, was listed as a volunteer under the transition team for the National Security Council.  Brandon Belford currently works as the Senior Director and the Chief of Staff for the Public Policy team at Lyft, and was listed under the transition team for the Office of Management and Budget. Ted Dean is the Head of Public Policy at Dropbox. Before he worked at Dropbox, he “served in the Obama Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary and Acting Assistant Secretary in the International Trade Administration of the US Department of Commerce,” according to Privacy Conference. The Biden-Harris transition website  listed Dean under the Office of the United States Trade Representative. Matt Olsen was hired by Uber as its chief security officer in 2018, according to Axios. Before this, Olsen reportedly served as the general counsel of the National Security Agency and director of the National Counterterrorism Center under the Obama administration. Olsen was listed under the Intelligence Community.  Ann Dunkin is Dell's chief technology officer, according to Protocol. Dunkin was listed under the Environmental Protection Agency. William Fields is a Senior Associate, Pipeline & Partnerships at Sidewalk Labs, an “urban innovation company working to make cities more sustainable and affordable for all,” according to the company’s website. Fields was listed under the Treasury Department. Arthur Plews “spent three years at the Small Business Administration at the end of the Obama administration. Since then, he's worked at Stripe in an operations role. He's now part of Biden's review team for the SBA,” according to ArsTechnica. Stripe claimed on its website: “We bring together everything that’s required to build websites and apps that accept payments and send payouts globally.” Plews was listed under the Small Business Administration. Phillip Carter works as a senior corporate attorney with Tableau, a software company according to Georgetown Law’s website, where Carter also teaches a class on national security business law. Carter is also a veteran, and was listed under the Department of Veterans Affairs.  Nairi Tashjian Hourdajian is the Vice President of Communications at Figma, a web-based design platform. Hourdajian was listed under the Department of Transportation. Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representative and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.