Robert Pepper leads a team driving Cisco’s global agenda for advanced technology policy in areas such as broadband, IP enabled services, wireless, security and privacy and ICT development including working with governments across the globe on developing national digital and broadband strategies.
He joined Cisco in July 2005 from the FCC where he served as Chief of the Office of Plans and Policy and Chief of Policy Development beginning in 1989 where he focused on issues cutting across traditional boundaries and led teams implementing telecommunications legislation, planning for the transition to digital television, designing and implementing the first U.S. spectrum auctions, and developing policies promoting the development of the Internet.
Before joining the FCC, he was Director of the Annenberg Washington Program in Communications Policy. His government service also included Acting Associate Administrator at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and initiating a program on Computers, Communications and Information Policy at the National Science Foundation.
His academic appointments included faculty positions at the Universities of Iowa, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, and as a research affiliate at Harvard University. He serves on the board of directors of the U.S. Telecommunications Training Institute (USTTI) and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), advisory boards for Columbia University and Michigan State University, and is a Communications Program Fellow at the Aspen Institute. He is a member of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Spectrum Management Advisory Committee and the UK’s Ofcom Spectrum Advisory Board. Pepper received his BA. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.