 I'm Christine DeBry, and I oversee the fellowship program on public knowledge. In the past two years, we've had seven public interest fellows. Our first fellow, Kate 4C, was at the forefront of the net neutrality battle. Our second fellow, Ej El Casaperalta, advocated for low income and rural telecom and internet issues. She's now a student in law school, and she's planning to continue the same focus when she graduates. We hope that by training and mentoring public interest fellows, they will go on to careers being a voice for the public. I came to public knowledge with a background in political campaigning and technology communications. And this fellowship offered me the opportunity to combine those paths, while also infusing the arts, which is something I've always been really passionate about. I have been overwhelmed by the support I've had here from the public knowledge staff. From day one, Gene Kimmelman and everyone at public knowledge has made it very clear that their priority with this fellowship program is to really kind of groom the next generation of advocates. And I feel really blessed to be one of the people who's benefiting from that. My fellowship with public knowledge gives me a fantastic opportunity to work hands-on every day with the issues that are most important to me. I came to law school because I was fascinated with technology and communications policy issues. The opportunity to work with public knowledge at a law school has given me an amazing opportunity to learn, to develop my skills, and to contribute to the public interest community on these important issues. At public knowledge, I have the opportunity to work on issues like modernizing lifeline, special access, bringing broadband and accessibility to communities that need it. Part of the reason why I took this fellowship is because technology is at the forefront of the issues. Public knowledge is at the forefront of those debates. And so when I wanted to get another opportunity to learn and develop public knowledge was really the only place to go. I was an undergraduate student in mathematics and computer science at the University of California in San Diego when I decided to take a year off school and do a fellowship with the Ford Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation with my host organization as public knowledge. So I'm a traditional technologist, and public knowledge is a public interest advocacy organization, so I'm kind of an outsider. But that has given me an amazing opportunity to learn all about public interest advocacy, what actually happens in Washington, the reasoning behind the laws that govern technology and everything that is important to me. So this fellowship has been an amazing opportunity to meet people, go to Congress, and actually do work that will hopefully have an impact on the things that affect the rest of my career. I really have been pleasantly surprised by many of the strategies that my time here at public knowledge has taught me. The importance of coalitions, for example, especially for organizations that have limited resources, and the opportunity that you have when you sit down with the opposition and really just clear the air and communicate with them what you both are thinking. These are some really kind of hardcore strategies that I can apply in the rest of my career as an advocate. And it's because of my experience here at PK that I've gotten to learn that. I came to public knowledge because I was inspired by the organization's commitment to increasing opportunities for freedom of expression on communications platforms and infrastructure. And I was inspired by their work increasing access to knowledge, information, and culture. For law students who are just getting out of school, who want to go into public interest, it can be really difficult to find opportunities to launch their career. A lot of public interest organizations don't have the resources to bring recent law grads on and help them kind of learn the ropes. And I think that a fellowship program like Public Knowledge is key to providing the tools for new lawyers to become public interest advocates. I think if you are interested in being a fellow, it's something you should absolutely tap into. And public knowledge, the fact that we have a handful of fellows is really something that's quite unique. We have a chance to engage with each other. We're all also doing our own thing on our own paths and I feel very lucky to be here. I'm Gene Kimmelman. I'm president and CEO of Public Knowledge. And I have been a public interest advocate for more than 30 years. And for much of that time, I have actually been trying to learn from others at the same time as I train young new advocates how to do what I have been doing. This is important for many reasons. Number one, for the advocates themselves. They come with knowledge. Some are lawyers, some are economists, some are technologists. They come with a passion usually for doing public interest. But what they don't have is the understanding of how to translate that into actual policy. How do you deal with policy members? How do you deal with the media? How do you deal with broad stakeholder communities? How do you put together a coalition? That's what we try to bring together for these people. So they have the opportunity to experiment and learn on their own feet how you truly make policy. It's valuable for an organization like Public Knowledge because we get the diversity, the passion of new people coming into the field, a virtual pipeline of new skilled energetic advocates. And we put them to work. But we also give them a full immersion in the process of they understand the nuts and bolts. And we see if it works for them and if it works for us. And then finally, it's really important to our democratic process because by bringing in new people who are wanting to make change, who really want to influence the policy-making process, putting them into the nuts and bolts of what works and what doesn't work, what's effective. How do you work with people who disagree with you? How do you work with the business community? How do you work with ideological policy makers who don't see eye to eye with you? That's so fundamental to making our democracy functional, making sure that the public interest first is fully represented in that process. But also that we have a new generation of advocates who know the inner play, the back and forth of the policy-making process so that they can maximize their influence in our democratic political system. Hi, I'm Whitney Tonkin, Senior Development Manager here at Public Knowledge. I just wanted to conclude our video by saying thank you to all of those that follow our work and continue to support us. We here at Public Knowledge feel very strongly about our fellowship program. The program not only benefits the fellows themselves, but it also strengthens the field as a whole. We'd like to continue to work with the fellows and give them the skills they need to become effective public interest advocates in the future. But in order to do so, we need your help. Please visit www.publicknowledge.org slash give to donate today. Thank you.