Tyrone Brown

President

Tyrone Brown has extensive experience resulting from a long and diverse career in communications law and industry. He came to Washington as a law clerk for the late Chief Justice Earl Warren, and served as FCC Commissioner during the Carter Administration.

Since leaving the government, he has interspersed communications law practice at two major DC law firms, Wiley Rein and Steptoe & Johnson, with business ventures. He participated in telecommunications and media start-ups, including the co-founding of DC’s first cable television system. He also collaborated on the successful re-launch after bankruptcy of IRIDIUM, the global mobile satellite system, serving as IRIDIUM’s vice chairman.

Early in his career, Mr. Brown worked on the staff of Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, and then was in-house counsel at Post-Newsweek Stations, the broadcast station operations of the Washington Post Company. He was also Director and principal outside counsel for Black Entertainment Television. Recently, he taught ethics to journalism students at Duke University.

Mr. Brown is former chair of the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and a director of the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council. He holds a J.D., with Distinction, from Cornell Law School, where he was managing editor of the Law Review; and BA in Philosophy and Religion from Hamilton College.

Andrew Jay Schwartzman

Senior Vice President and Policy Director

Andrew Jay Schwartzman has directed Media Access Project (MAP) since June, 1978. He is recognized as one of the leading media attorneys and has appeared on behalf of MAP before the Congress, the FCC and the courts on issues such as cable TV regulation, minority and female ownership and employment in the mass media,”equal time” laws and cable “open access.”

In recognition of his service as chief counsel in the public interest community’s challenge to the FCC’s June, 2003 media ownership deregulation decision, The Scientific American honored Mr. Schwartzman as one of the nation’s 50 leaders in technology for 2004. Mr. Schwartzman is also the 1994 recipient of the United Church of Christ Office of Communication’s Everett C. Parker Award and the 2004 recipient of the Media Matters Life Achievement Award.

Mr. Schwartzman is a faculty member of the Johns Hopkins University School of Arts and Sciences, where he teaches in its Communication in Contemporary Society Program. He serves on the International Advisory Board of Southwestern Law School’s National Entertainment & Media Law Institute and was the Distinguished Lecturer in Residence at the Institute’s Summer 2004 program at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University. His board memberships include the Advisory Board of the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Board of Directors of the Minority Media Telecommunications Council. He was co-founder and President of the Board of the Safe Energy Communications Counsel from 1991 through 2003.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968, and its law school in 1971, Schwartzman was staff counsel to the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ. From 1974 until he took his current position, Schwartzman worked for the U.S. Department of Energy and predecessor agencies. He is married to Linda Lazarus, an attorney/mediator practicing in Washington, DC.

Matthew F. Wood

Associate Director

Matt Wood joined MAP in September 2009. Before coming to MAP, he was an associate in the communications practice groups of two other law firms in Washington, DC. He worked at Hogan & Hartson from 2005 until 2009, and at Dow, Lohnes & Albertson from 2001 to 2004. His practice focused on broadband facilities deployments, cable programming contracts, and new technology wireless spectrum policy. He also specialized in universal service, intercarrier compensation, and special access issues, and worked extensively on intellectual property and privacy matters.

He has been active in local and national politics, having co-founded and served as general counsel to the 527 organization Win Back Respect during the 2004 presidential election cycle, and has served on the boards of other PACs and political organizations. He volunteered as a field coordinator, fundraiser, and election protection attorney for the Obama campaign in 2008, as well as the Kerry and Dean campaigns in 2003 and 2004.

While in law school, Matt served as an editor in chief for the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and wrote columns for the Harvard Law Record newspaper. Before attending law school, he worked in press relations for PBS, in public relations and development for a charitable medical research foundation, and in various capacities at several professional and college radio and television stations.

Matt obtained his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2001, and graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University in 1994 with a degree in film studies.

Kamilla N. Kovacs

Development and Communications Director

Kamilla Kovacs started at MAP in March 2009. Before joining the MAP team, Kamilla was a research assistant for the advocacy organization Free Press from 2005-2008. During her time at graduate school, Kamilla conducted research on issues including the modern “media reform” movement and the increase in business influence on U.S. public education curriculum during World War II. Her research assistantship with Free Press focused on municipal broadband policy, media ownership, and the journalism crisis.

Before graduate school, Kamilla was a Staff Assistant for Congressman Maurice D. Hinchey (D-NY), a leader on media ownership regulation in the House of Representatives. Kamilla also served as a research assistant on the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition’s technology policy team, and spearheaded Women for Obama for the state of Virginia during the 2008 Presidential campaign. She received an M.A. in Communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a B.A. in political science from the University of Virginia, and is a native of Hungary.

MAP Interns

MAP’s attorneys also supervise law student interns each semester. In recent years, MAP has had interns from Harvard, UCLA, Stanford, New York University, University of Pennsylvania, and other institutions. The internship is an integral part of MAP’s program, enhancing the delivery of services as well as creating a cadre of attorneys sensitive to the concerns of public interest law.