OTI Announces Staff Transitions

New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI) announced today that it has promoted Sarah Morris to Deputy Director. In this role, she will continue to lead the program’s open internet policy work, while also playing a key role in OTI’s strategic planning, fundraising, and organizational management in partnership with OTI’s Director Kevin Bankston.

Morris’s tenure at New America spans over seven years, during which she has taken on increasing leadership and management responsibilities, ultimately building out a team and portfolio around OTI’s long-standing open internet work. In addition to her role at OTI, Morris is an adjunct professor of law at George Washington Law School, where she teaches Telecommunications Law and Policy and legal writing. Prior to OTI, she was a fellow at Media Access Project, and she holds a J.D. and LL.M. in space, cyber, and telecommunications law from Nebraska Law.

In addition to Morris’s promotion, OTI has added two new members to its team. Spandana Singh and Becky Chao are both joining OTI as permanent staff following successful Millennial Public Policy Fellowships at New America. Singh joins as a policy program associate and will be focused on issues including online free expression and corporate transparency. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied international development, media studies, and technology entrepreneurship. Prior to her Millennial Fellowship with New America, Singh worked as a Public Policy Fellow at Twitter. Chao joins OTI as a policy analyst, and will be focused on issues including consumer privacy and competition policy. Prior to her work at New America, she spent two years in the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition. She is a graduate of Duke University, where she studied public policy, linguistics, and economics.

The following statement can be attributed to Kevin Bankston, Director of the Open Technology Institute:

“Over the past half decade that I’ve worked with Sarah Morris, I’ve had the pleasure of watching her steadily grow into her role as an indispensable coalition leader in the fight for a more open internet, and become a core partner in the leadership of OTI and the broader New America organization. Her promotion to Deputy Director of OTI is a well-earned and natural next step, as every ally in our community that has worked with her knows. OTI is a stronger organization with Sarah helping to chart its course, and in combination with the additional hiring of emerging tech policy experts Becky Chao and Spandana Singh to help staff our growing portfolio of work, OTI has a lot to be thankful for this particular holiday season.”

The Open Technology Institute (OTI) works at the intersection of technology and policy to ensure that every community has equitable access to digital technology and its benefits. We promote universal access to communications technologies that are both open and secure, using a multidisciplinary approach that brings together advocates, researchers, organizers, and innovators.