Biography:

Ajit Pai is the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. He was designated Chairman by President Donald Trump in January 2017. He had previously served as Commissioner at the FCC, appointed by then-President Barack Obama and confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate in May 2012. Earlier in his career, he served in various positions of increasing responsibility at the FCC, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Senate. Before becoming a Commissioner, he worked as a Partner at the law firm of Jenner & Block and served as in-house counsel at a telecommunications company. Since taking the helm at the FCC, Chairman Pai has championed regulatory modernization, updating rules to match marketplace realities and aiming to deliver consumer value through market-based solutions instead of preemptive regulation. He also has made the FCC more transparent, nimble, and accessible.

Chairman Pai graduated with honors from Harvard University in 1994 and from the University of Chicago Law School in 1997, where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and won the Thomas R. Mulroy Prize. In 2010, Pai was one of 55 individuals nationwide chosen for the 2011 Marshall Memorial Fellowship, a leadership development initiative of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. The son of immigrants from India, Chairman Pai grew up in Parsons, Kansas.