This post is part of our “Spotlight on NTIA” blog series, which is highlighting the work that NTIA employees are doing to advance NTIA’s mission of promoting broadband adoption, finding spectrum to meet the growing demand for wireless technologies, and ensuring the Internet remains an engine for innovation and economic growth.
Laura Breeden has certainly made her mark on the digital world. While she describes herself as a “minor player,” Breeden, director of external affairs for the Office of Telecommunication and Information Applications’ Broadband USA program, has spent much of her career tracking the evolution of technology and the Internet.
Breeden’s work in this area began in 1983 when she joined BBN, a Cambridge, Mass., high-technology research and development firm. Her project, CSNET (the Computer Science Network), was funded by the National Science Foundation to connect university and corporate computer science departments around the country and the world via ARPANET, the platform that would eventually become the modern-day Internet. She helped link research networks in Japan, Korea, France, Ireland, Denmark, Great Britain, and Germany to their counterparts in the United States.
After a three-year stint heading the Federation of American Research Networks, a nonprofit trade association for Internet service providers, Breeden began working for NTIA in 1994 as the director of the Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program. The federal grant program was focused on developing Internet-based services for the public sector. Breeden helped develop the $60 million program from the ground up, which involved writing the program rules, designing the application and review processes, and selecting the final candidates. She left NTIA in 1996 to start a consulting practice focused on technology planning and project development, and in 2000 joined the Education Development Center to lead a national technical assistance program for community technology centers.
In 2009, Breeden came back to NTIA to work for the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) as the program director of grants focused on public computer centers and broadband adoption. In this role, she helped oversee more than 100 successful projects, totaling $450 million in grants, focused on expanding digital literacy and broadband adoption. With BTOP winding down, Breeden is now working on NTIA’s latest broadband initiative, BroadbandUSA, which is utilizing the expertise NTIA gained through managing its BTOP projects to provide technical advice to communities seeking to expand broadband in communities.
As NTIA starts a new chapter in its broadband work so too will Breeden, who plans to retire from NTIA at the end of June. In reflecting on her work at NTIA, she says the favorite part of her job has been seeing the creativity from recipients that the grants unleashed. Many of these creative approaches to broadband adoption can be found in NTIA’s Broadband Adoption Toolkit, released in May 2013. Breeden earned a Commerce Department Silver Medal Award for her work on the toolkit.
Breeden grew up in Owensboro and Lexington, Kentucky with her parents and two younger brothers. She graduated from Ohio’s Oberlin College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Urban Studies and Education. While she doesn’t expect to totally stop working after she retires, Breeden said she is looking forward to spending more time reading, gardening, cooking, kayaking, and playing with her twin granddaughters.