![[Photo of David S. Byer]](fullpics/byer.jpg)
David
S. Byer
former
Executive Director, Web-based Education
Commission
Senior Manager, Education Strategic Relations, Apple
David Byer is a senior
manager with Apple, heading up the company’s
policy, advocacy, and strategic relations in the area of education. Byer joined
Apple in January 2001 after completing a year-long tenure as executive director
of the Web-based Education Commission,
a 16-member panel established by Congress to recommend actions to help maximize
the educational promise of the Internet. Byer was appointed in December 1999
by then Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, who chaired the Commission.
Byer managed the Commission's
successful efforts to assess the critical pedagogical and policy issues affecting
the use of the Web in learning. The members of the Commission included congressional
lawmakers, K-12 and postsecondary educators and administrators and leading
high tech executives appointed by the President, Secretary of Education and
majority and minority leadership of Congress. The Commission issued its findings
and policy recommendations in December 2000.
From 1994 through his
appointment, Byer worked for the Software & Information Industry Association
(formerly the Software Publishers Association), the principal trade association
of the computer software and information industries. He most recently was
SIIA's Vice President of Government Affairs, a position he assumed in 1997.
Byer directed the association's overall public policy and advocacy program
and was its chief lobbyist on issues pertaining to education technology, high-tech
worker training, and content regulation.
Before joining SIIA,
Byer spent eight years in the field of government relations focusing on workforce,
K-12 and postsecondary education policy issues with the American Society for
Training and Development, National School Boards Association, and the National
Association of College and University Business Officers. He began his career
on Capitol Hill as an assistant to former U.S. Sen. Claiborne Pell of Rhode
Island.
Byer has served on the
boards of the Washington, DC-based Committee for Education Funding and National
Coalition for Technology in Education and Training. He holds an MBA in business
economics and public policy from George Washington University, where he also
received his bachelor's degree.
