Alissa Cooper

Executive Director, Knight-Georgetown Institute

Alissa Cooper is the executive director of the Knight-Georgetown Institute (KGI). Prior to joining KGI, Cooper spent a decade at Cisco Systems in a variety of 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 role in shaping Cisco’s approach to technology standardization, public policy, and privacy across the company’s networking, security, and collaboration businesses. Cooper was the first woman in Cisco history to be promoted to fellow, the company’s highest engineering distinction.

Cooper has been a leader in the development of global Internet standards and governance. She served in a variety of leadership roles in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), including serving as IETF chair from 2017 to 2021. She led the IETF through times of significant transition related to Internet security and encryption, network performance, privacy, and real-time voice and video. She also served as the chair of the IANA Stewardship Coordination Group, which delivered the technical plan used by the U.S. Department of Commerce to transfer the stewardship of key Internet functions to the global multistakeholder community.

Prior to joining Cisco, Cooper 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. Cooper 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.