Alan Davidson is the first Director of Digital Economy at the U.S. Department of Commerce and Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Commerce.

Prior to joining the department, Alan was director of the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. He also was a Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), where he was a co-founder of the new MIT Information Policy Project and a Fellow at the Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business.

Until 2012, Alan was the Director of Public Policy for Google in the Americas.  He opened Google's Washington, D.C. office in 2005, and led the company’s public policy and government relations efforts in North and South America.

Prior to joining Google, Alan was Associate Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a public interest group promoting civil liberties and human rights online. He has testified before Congress, written, and spoken widely on a range of Internet policy issues including free expression, privacy, content regulation, encryption, network neutrality and copyright online.

Alan started his professional life as a computer scientist. He was a senior consultant at Booz Allen & Hamilton, where he helped design information systems for NASA's Space Station Freedom Project. Alan has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science and a master’s degree in technology and policy from MIT. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School, where he was Symposium Editor of the Yale Law Journal.