Senior Vice President for Global and Strategic Policy
America Online
George Vradenburg is America Online, Inc.’s Senior Vice President for Global and Strategic Policy. Reporting to Steve Case, the company’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Vradenburg sets the Company’s strategic course on evolving policy issues facing the interactive medium.
Mr. Vradenburg joined AOL as General Counsel in the beginning of 1997 and, in under two years, has become a critical player in the online industry, helping frame the issues and shape the interactive policy debate in the United States and overseas. Mr. Vradenburg’s mission in working with governments and industry leaders locally, nationally and around the world is to craft a policy framework that ushers this medium into the next millennium and promotes the public interest as the Internet reshapes business and society.
The array of policy issues on which Mr. Vradenburg has helped AOL lead the industry include: protecting consumer privacy online, winning industry support for a pledge of “zero tolerance” for child-related crimes online, campaigning against junk e-mail (spam), protecting intellectual property online and developing a new framework for e-commerce and international trade.
He is a frequent speaker in the US and elsewhere on Internet policy and has testified in the US Congress on electronic commerce, copyright and privacy issues. Vradenburg was a featured speaker at the 1997 Bonn Ministerial Conference on electronic commerce.
Mr. Vradenburg previously served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel of CBS, Inc. and Executive Vice President of Fox, Inc. Prior to joining America Online, he was a senior partner in the Los Angeles office of Latham & Watkins and co-chair of its Entertainment & Media Practice Group. He received his B.A. from Oberlin College and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1967.