Reed Hundt – 50th Reunion Essay

Reed Hundt

6416 Brookside Drive

Chevy Chase, md 20815

rehundt@gmail.com

202-494-4111

Spouse(s): Elizabeth Ann Katz (1980)

Child(ren): Adam (1982), Nathaniel (1985), Sara (1989)

Education: YC,69, Yale Law, 74

Career: Latham & Watkins, 1975-93; Chairman, Federal Communications Commission, 1993-97; McKinsey, 1998-2008; Skadden adviser, 2009-14; Covington adviser, 2014-present; various boards including Intel 2001-present; CEO, Coalition for Green Capital; CEO, Making Every Vote Count

Avocations: writing, rowing

College: Davenport

Most everything that happened to me in the last half century came as a surprise, especially in terms of so much luck and joy.

My wife, Betsy, and I live in a Maryland suburb of Washington, DC, slightly tonier than the one about a mile and a half away from where my father moved his family. I have spent most of my career being a Washington lawyer, like my dad. Betsy graduated from Vassar in our year, obtained her doctorate in psychology. She has provided cognitive behavior therapy to hundreds. Our children Adam, Nathaniel, and Sara went to Brown, Yale, and Cornell; graduate school at Michigan, Yale and Berkeley; careers for now in e-commerce, software, and public interest law. My family has taught me more, given me more happiness than I would have ever guessed.

The arc of my career lay far beyond my collegiate imagination. The professors in my freshman physics and math classes quickly convinced me to swap the slide rule for a typewriter. Few knew then that technology would define our generation’s history. Besides, even if I had the requisite skills, the critical inventions came after we graduated (e.g., Intel microprocessor, 1971; first cellular network, 1979). None of you, my classmates, would have figured me to have the principal role in writing the rules of the road into cyberspace.

In 1992 my high school classmate Al Gore persuaded my law school friend Bill Clinton to name me chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The Senate confirmed my appointment in November 1993. In the same month Congress authorized my agency to create the digital cellular market in the United States. At more or less the same time a breakthrough in the browser and the free release of Tim Berners-Lee’s protocols combined to launch the Internet commercially. The total transformation, and inexorable combination, of computing and communication began. Since then I had a hand in the story.

Almost two decades earlier, I shocked myself by starting law practice in Los Angeles. The intervention of classmate and lifelong friend Fred Goldberg, ’69, Y Law ’73, persuaded the third or fourth ranked firm in the forgotten downtown of that surreal city to hire me. Pure fortuity for me that the managing partner had created a business model and a culture that made Latham & Watkins one of the biggest and most successful law firms in the world.

In the current century, I became the only person in American history who went to high school and to law school with people who won the national popular vote but did not become president. That was bad luck for Al Gore and Hillary Clinton and, in my opinion, for our generation, not to mention the world, country, and me. In 2017 classmates Jon Bell, Fred Goldberg, and Richard Tedlow joined me on the board of a nonprofit aimed at causing states to pass a law that would make their electors choose as president the person who won the national popular vote. We think this structural change is the most important reform for the country’s troubled democracy. If you want to help, please e-mail any of us.