Meet Geoffrey Starks

President Donald Trump will nominate Geoffrey Starks to fill the Democratic seat on the Federal Communications Commission being vacated by Mignon Clyburn. Here’s what you need to know about Starks, an assistant chief in the FCC’s enforcement bureau:

He was first brought to the FCC from the Justice Department in 2015 to tackle one of the agency’s “thorniest political issues,” said former enforcement bureau chief Travis LeBlanc. The issue: waste, fraud, and abuse in Universal Service Fund programs. “It’s complicated and he deeply believes in the program,” LeBlanc said, adding, “He believes it is designed to connect historically-vulnerable communities to communications. Every one of those dollars, he wants to make sure goes to that purpose.” LeBlanc predicted Starks would keep up a similar agenda as commissioner, focusing on giving voice to the vulnerable while holding violators accountable. While at DOJ, Starks helped prosecute a former DC neighborhood advisory commissioner accused of a hate crime for attacking a homeless man. And former Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole, for whom Starks served as senior counsel, called the FCC nominee “somebody who does their homework and looks at problems from the standpoint not of politics, but of serving the public.” Cole went on: “This is a person who can deal with the novel issues and novel concepts that are going to come up.”

Forget LinkedIn: Here’s your 10-second bio on Starks. He grew up in Kansas City, attended both Harvard and Yale Law School, and worked in private practice at Williams & Connolly. He also served as staff to the Illinois state Democrats — including a then-little-known state senator by the name of Barack Obama.