Jennifer Manner

Position: Senior vice president of government relations for District-based Entertainment Software Association, which works with makers of computer and video games.

Career Highlights: Professor of law, Georgetown University and American University; vice president, regulatory affairs, Skyterra Communications; senior counsel, FCC Commissioner Kathleen Q. Abernathy; director, International Alliances, WorldCom.

Age: 44

Education: BA, political science and theater arts, State University of New York at Albany; JD, New York Law School; LLM, international law, Georgetown University Law Center.

Personal: Lives in Bethesda with husband, Eric Glasgow, professor of oncology at Georgetown University Medical School.

How did you get to where you are?

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be president or an actress. Maybe that explains my majors of theater and political science.

I didn't realize that I had an interest in technology until I took a law and computer course where I wrote about early video games. I increasingly honed in on technology, even while getting my master's of law at Georgetown.

Technology issues were extremely interesting to me. Here were innovators placed into the legal and regulatory structures. How does government grapple with that? How do you not overly regulate? How do you create a marketplace to enable the advancement of technology?

After working for the Federal Communications Commission, I decided to go in-house and practice law. I wanted to see the bigger picture of how decisions were made to go down a certain path.

At MCI, my primary client was a joint venture co-owned by Bill Gates. It was very cutting-edge, very high-tech and very exciting. The company was creating a satellite system and was going to offer a new type of service. The challenge was getting authority for it and obtaining resources needed to operate the system both domestically and internationally.

What attracted me to ESA was that it marries quite a few of my interests. It's not a brand-new technology, but it's growing. Gaming and video games are really quite an art form. I will be able to help with many critical policy issues that are impacting the industry, including trade, patent reform and intellectual property protection.

I bring an understanding of the creative process. My degree and experience in theater arts and scriptwriting really helped to give me an understanding about production and theater, which is a form of entertainment, just like video games.

--Vanessa Mizell

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