Celebrate MMTC Law School Fellowship Program

As a part of the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council’s (MMTC) 40th Anniversary, we are celebrating the MMTC Law School Fellowship Program and the distinguished tech, media, and telecom professionals that are our fellowships are named after. Their life, work, and legacy serve as inspiration to our fellows. Read more about these professionals below.

• Henry Geller (1924-2020) served as the former FCC General Counsel and the first National Telecommunications & Information Administration Director. Geller was inducted into the MMTC Hall of Fame in 2000. Read more about him here. Go here to listen to an audio interview of Geller that was produced by The Cable Center’s Hauser Oral History Project.

• Erwin Krasnow is described as “a dean of the Washington communications bar” by Legal Times. Krasnow was inducted into the MMTC Hall of Fame for his exceptional, long-term service to the cause of diversity and inclusion in the media and telecommunications industries in 2004. He also received our Champion of Digital Equality Award in 2020. As MMTC’s Vice Chair and Executive Committee member, he has joined us in our fight for new entrants and new technologies. In addition, the expertise he developed in his communications law career as Senior Vice President and General Counsel at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), Partner at Verner, Liipfert, Bernard, McPherson & Hand, Partner and Of Counsel to Foster Garvey, and a legal advisor who assisted in laying the foundation for the creation of South Africa’s NAB, has helped to mentor and train our fellows. Go here to watch The BEA Thought Leadership Series video interview with Krasnow.

• Earle K. Moore (1921-2001; photo unavailable) was a pioneering communications lawyer who represented the United Church of Christ in the groundbreaking cases in the 1960s and 1970s that brought about the desegregation of broadcasting. Moore made communications law history by successfully challenging the license renewal for a television station in Jackson, Mississippi in 1964. He was inducted into our Hall of Fame in 2000. Go here to learn more about him.

• Henry M. Rivera is MMTC’s Chair Emeritus and a partner at Wiley Rein LLP. Rivera became the first Hispanic Federal Communications Commission Commissioner and served in this position from 1981 to 1985. He also served as the Federal Communications Bar Association President (1995-1996) and General Counsel of the Benton Foundation (2003-2012). He was inducted into our Hall of Fame in 2003. Go here to learn more about him.

• Jenell Trigg is Chair Emeritus of the Privacy, Data Protection and Cybersecurity Practice Group at Lerman Senter and Certified Information Privacy Professional under the International Association of Privacy Professionals. During her distinguished career, Trigg specialized in privacy, data protection and cybersecurity issues, intellectual property concerns, and government regulation of the internet and new technologies. Her law practice also focused on broadcast, wireless, cable, internet, and telecommunications industries. MMTC celebrated her career and accomplishments when she was inducted into our Hall of Fame in 2014 and received the Extraordinary Service Award in 2008 and Everett C. Parker Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. The Federal Communications Bar Association also recognized her as the “Dean of the Bar” in 2023. Go here to learn more about her.

The MMTC Law School Fellowship Program has directly trained more than 100 diverse students and professionals. Become an MMTC 40th Anniversary Partner and help us continue building a diverse pipeline of next-gen tech, media, and telecom professionals. Your generous contribution will help third-year law students learn about telecommunications and administrative law from a civil rights perspective, conduct research for MMTC staff, prepare for the transition to legal practice, and be paired with mentors to advise them on bar preparation, job searching, networking, career planning and legal practice.