#VoiceCloningFTC 1 

January 28, 2020 | Washington, D.C.

SPEAKER BIOS

Opening Remarks 

Rohit Chopra was sworn in as a Federal Trade Commissioner on May 2, 2018. Commissioner Chopra 

has actively advocated to promote a fair and fully-functioning marketplace through vigorous agency 

enforcement that protects families and honest companies from those that break the law. During his 

tenure at the FTC, he has pushed for aggressive remedies against lawbreaking companies, especially 

repeat offenders, and has worked to reverse the FTC’s reliance on no-money, no-fault settlements.

After the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Chopra joined 

the Department of the Treasury to launch the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). He 

then served as Assistant Director of the CFPB, overseeing the agency’s student loan agenda. The 

Secretary of the Treasury also appointed him to serve as the CFPB’s Student Loan Ombudsman, a new 

position established in the financial reform law. In these roles, he led efforts to spur competition in the 

student loan financing market, develop new tools for students and student loan borrowers to make 

smarter decisions, and secure hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds for borrowers victimized by 

unlawful conduct by loan servicers, debt collectors, and for-profit college chains. Chopra later served 

as Special Adviser to the Secretary of Education to advance the Department’s efforts to improve 

student loan servicing, reduce unnecessary defaults, and bolster enforcement. He was also a Senior 

Fellow at the Consumer Federation of America, where he focused on consumer protection issues 

facing young people and military families, and a Visiting Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.

Commissioner Chopra is the recipient of multiple awards for his public service and contributions to the 

field of consumer finance. Prior to entering government, Chopra worked at McKinsey & Company, the 

global management consultancy, where he worked in the financial services, health care, and consumer 

technology sectors. He holds a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from the Wharton School at 

the University of Pennsylvania. He was also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship.

Presentation: The State of Voice Cloning Technology

Patrick G. Traynor is a Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science and 

Engineering (CISE) at the University of Florida. He also co-directs the Florida Institute for Cybersecurity 

(FICS) Research and is the John and Mary Lou Dasburg Preeminent Chair in Engineering. Dr. Traynor is 

committed to the real-world impact of his research, and is the co-founder of three start-up companies 

(Skim Reaper, CryptoDrop, and Pindrop Security). He and his team have uncovered critical 

vulnerabilities in cellular networks, made the first measurement of mobile malware infections, and 

offer robust mechanisms for combatting Caller-ID scams. He is the recipient of the National Science 

Foundation CAREER Award (2010), a Sloan Fellow (2014), a Fellow for the Center for Financial Inclusion 

at Accion (2016), and a Kavli Fellow (2017).
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Panel 1: The Positives and Negatives of Voice Cloning

John Costello has been a speech language pathologist specializing in augmentative and alternative 

communication (AAC) at Boston Children’s Hospital for nearly 35 years. Costello pioneered the 

Message BankingTM Process in the pediatric intensive care unit in the early 90s and now specializes in 

AAC for people with ALS where he has had a particular focus in voice preservation and custom voice 

creation. He is adjunct faculty at Boston University, has authored or co-authored papers and chapters 

focused on AAC intervention and has lectured nationally and internationally on varied topics in AAC. 

Rebecca Damon was first elected SAG-AFTRA executive vice president, the union’s second-highest 

office, in April 2016. She was re-elected in 2017 and again in 2019. Damon, a New York-based actor 

and voiceover performer, has also served SAG-AFTRA in a variety of other capacities. A champion for 

workers’ rights, Damon’s leadership includes strengthening New York’s right of publicity and digital 

image rights for the benefit of all members. Outside of SAG-AFTRA, Damon advocates for workers’ 

rights as a vice president of the New York State AFL-CIO Executive Council and a member of the New 

York City Central Labor Council. She is also a vice president of the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, an 

educational, humanitarian and philanthropic nonprofit organization. She is the primary elected liaison 

for Foundation programming in New York and oversaw creation of the Robin Williams Center for 

Entertainment and Media in Times Square.

Rupal Patel is the Founder and CEO of VocaliD, a voice technology company that provides AI-generated

voices with personality. VocaliD’s award-winning technology leverages the latest advances in machine 

learning, signal processing and voice analytics along with the company’s crowdsourced Voicebank to 

create inclusive, diverse and brand aligned voices for organizations and individuals with special needs. 

Dr. Patel began her career as a speech clinician where she became fascinated with the potential of 

using speech technologies for assistive communication which then led to a doctorate in speech 

science. Her interdisciplinary research applies empirical evidence about speech motor control to 

develop novel communication technologies. She is currently on leave from Northeastern University 

where she is a tenured professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences and the Department of 

Communication Sciences and Disorders. Named one of The Top 11 Visionaries in Voice 2019 by 

Voicebot.ai and Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business, Dr. Patel has been featured on 

TED, NPR, and in major international news and technology publications.

Mona Sedky is a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Computer Crime & 

Intellectual Property Section in Washington, D.C. For over a decade, Sedky has led criminal 

investigations and prosecutions of a wide variety of cybercrimes in federal courts around the country. 

Her cases have focused on prosecuting cyber sexual predators engaged in “sextortion,” nonconsensual pornography, online threats, and other forms of cyberstalking, as well as computer hackers 

engaged in large-scale theft and trafficking of payment card data and other personally identifiable 

information. Her other representative cases include corporate network intrusions, infrastructure cyber 

attacks, commercial bank account intrusions, ATM cashouts, online international money laundering, 

online securities fraud, and cable modem hacking. Sedky has conducted several multi-week jury trials. 

She also regularly guest-lectures at Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to joining the 

Department, Sedky spent ten years with the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer 

Protection, where she civilly prosecuted online and brick-and-mortar fraud schemes. Her prosecution 

work has been featured in VICE’s Broadly, Wired, Bloomberg, and on the Lawfare Podcast. She was 

listed in Forbes’ “America’s Top 50 Women in Tech 2018” and Wired U.K.’s “Ten Female Innovators You 

Should Know About” (2018). 
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Christine Todaro is an attorney in the FTC’s Division of Marketing Practices, Bureau of Consumer 

Protection. Since joining the FTC in 2009, Todaro has investigated and litigated cases against individuals 

and companies engaged in a variety of deceptive and unfair practices, including business opportunity 

schemes, unsolicited text messaging, and high-tech fraud. In addition, Todaro is the FTC’s Program 

Coordinator for the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, and the FTC’s Franchise and Business Opportunity 

Rules. Todaro received her JD from the University of Cincinnati College of Law and her BBA cum laude

from the University of Notre Dame. 

Panel 2: The Ethics of Voice Cloning

Rosalyn W. Berne, Ph.D. serves the National Academy of Engineering as Director for the Center of 

Engineering Ethics and Society (CEES). Among her responsibilities are Principle Investigator on the NSF 

sponsored Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science, better known as the OEC. As Associate 

Professor of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia's School of Engineering and Applied 

Sciences, Dr. Berne explores the intersecting realms of emerging technologies, science, fiction and 

myth, and the links between the human and non-human worlds, and teaches courses on engineering 

ethics. Among her publications are two academic books: Nanotalk: Conversations with Scientists and 

Engineers about Ethics, Meaning and Belief in the Development of Nanotechnology, and Creating Life 

from Life: Biotechnology and Science Fiction); numerous conference papers and journal articles; and 

Waiting in the Silence, a science fiction novel. She also has written two award-winning books 

published in the genre of “body-mind-spirit.” 

Leigh Hafrey is Senior Lecturer in Behavioral and Policy Sciences at the MIT Sloan School of 

Management. Since 1995, he has offered courses in communication, ethics, and leadership in the MBA 

and other graduate programs in the U.S. and abroad. He has also taught at Harvard Business School; 

served as co-Master of Mather House, one of the undergraduate residences in Harvard College; and for 

more than 20 years has moderated seminars in programs of the Aspen Institute, an international 

educational and policy studies organization focused on values-driven leadership. He serves on the 

boards of the Green Rural Opportunities Fund, a spin-off of the Butajira, Ethiopia-based GreenPath 

Food, and ClassACT HR73, an alumni initiative of the Harvard-Radcliffe Class of 1973. Hafrey is the 

author of two books on values and leadership, The Story of Success: Five Steps to Mastering Ethics in 

Business (2005) and War Stories: Fighting, Competing, Imagining, Leading (2016). He holds an A.B. in 

English Literature from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale University.

Ashish Jaiman is the Director of Technology and Operations for Microsoft’s Defending Democracy 

program. He has more than 20 years’ experience in building and leading cross-functional, highperforming teams to create and implement highly scalable, mission-critical software solutions and lines 

of business. Jaiman’s mission is to help customers to improve their security posture and defend against 

cyber-attacks. Jaiman led the work on Microsoft AccountGuard service, which provides customers with 

additional monitoring and notification against nation-state attacks. Jaiman is currently working on 

disinformation defense and deepfakes intervention strategy and its impact on democracy. In his 

previous entrepreneurial adventures, Jaiman has driven growth in and exited two successful startups. 

Jaiman was CTO of NGP Software (now NGPVAN) before coming to Microsoft. Jaiman also ran the 

engineering team for a startup that was acquired by a bank.
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Kirsten Martin is an associate professor at the George Washington University’s School of Business. She 

researches privacy, technology, and corporate responsibility. She has written about privacy and the 

ethics of technology in leading academic journals across disciplines (Journal of Business Ethics, BEQ, 

Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, Journal of Legal Studies, Washington University Law Review, 

Journal of Business Research, etc.) as well as practitioner publications such as MISQ Executive. She is 

the Technology and Business Ethics editor for the Journal of Business Ethics and the recipient of three 

NSF grants for her work on privacy, technology, and ethics. Dr. Martin is also a member of the advisory 

board for the Future Privacy Forum and a fellow at the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate 

Ethics for her work on stakeholder theory and trust. She is regularly asked to speak on privacy and the 

ethics of big data, including her recent Tedx talk. Dr. Martin earned her B.S. Engineering from the 

University of Michigan and her MBA and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate 

School of Business.

Dan Salsburg is the Chief Counsel of the FTC’s Office of Technology Research and Investigation 

(OTech). Housed in the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection (BCP), OTech serves as a trusted resource 

for research and information on technology’s impact on consumers. Salsburg has researched the use of 

leaked identifiers and payment data, the adoption of email authentication technologies by popular 

domains, manufacturers’ practices that inhibit product repairs, and the security offerings of web hosts 

that market their services to small businesses. In 2016, Salsburg helped organize the first FTC 

PrivacyCon. Prior to joining OTech, Salsburg served as an Assistant Director and staff attorney in BCP, 

where he supervised and litigated cases involving spam, internet fraud, and mobile technologies. 

Previously, he served as a Senior Trial Attorney in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s 

Division of Enforcement. He received his BA and JD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Panel 3: Authentication, Detection, and Mitigation

John Amein is Vice President at ID R&D, a leading provider of multi-modal biometric technologies 

including best-in-class voice biometrics for mobile and web. Amein began his work with biometrics in 

2006 at Voxeo, which was acquired by Aspect Software in 2013 where he served as VP of Product 

Management. Prior to joining ID R&D he also served as president of Voice Biometrics Group and held 

leadership roles at Dialogic, Intel and AT&T. He earned his MSEE from Stanford and a BSEE from North 

Carolina State University, where he also serves as a member of the Strategic Advisory Board for the 

ECE Department.

Neil F. Johnson supports DARPA’s Media Forensics (MediFor) and Semantic Forensics (SemaFor) 

programs as a Science & Engineering Technical Advisor (SETA) contractor. In late 2018, Dr. Johnson 

joined DARPA driven by his passion for digital forensics, and getting the right tools into the hands of 

practitioners. Following the attacks on 9/11/2001, he left his role as research scientist and Associate 

Director of the Center for Secure Information Systems (CSIS) at George Mason University (GMU) to 

apply his research to supporting national security and combating terrorism. Dr. Johnson has over 20-

years in multimedia analysis and over 10 running and leading research in a forensics laboratory. He 

never fully left academia. His teaching career spans nearly 17 years covering topics such as 

cryptography, forensic science, and media analysis as an Adjunct Professor at George Washington 

University (2003-2017), George Mason University (2018-present), and guest lectures at other 

institutions.
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Siwei Lyu is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science and the Director of Computer Vision 

and Machine Learning Lab (CVML) of University at Albany, State University of New York. Dr. Lyu 

received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Dartmouth College in 2005, and his M.S. degree in 

Computer Science in 2000 and B.S. degree in Information Science in 1997, both from Peking University, 

China. Dr. Lyu's research interests include digital media forensics, computer vision, and machine 

learning. Dr. Lyu has published over 130 refereed journal and conference papers. Dr. Lyu's research 

projects are funded by NSF, DARPA, ARO and NIJ. He is the recipient of the IEEE Signal Processing 

Society Best Paper Award (2011), the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2010), SUNY 

Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Activities (2018) and Google Faculty 

Research Award (2019). Dr. Lyu has testified at public hearings concerning DeepFakes before Congress 

and the New York State Senate.

Patrick G. Traynor, see above.

Will Maxson is an Assistant Director of the FTC’s Division of Marketing Practices, where he previously 

served as Staff Attorney and Program Manager for Do Not Call Enforcement. Before joining the FTC, 

Maxson was a litigation associate at Jones Day and at Wiley Rein (now Wiley). Maxson received a BA 

from Vanderbilt University and graduated cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School.

Closing Remarks

Lois C. Greisman heads the Division of Marketing Practices in the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer 

Protection. Under Greisman’s management, Marketing Practices leads the FTC’s law enforcement 

initiatives tackling telemarketing fraud (including Do Not Call/Robocall enforcement), fraudulent 

business and investment opportunity schemes (including multilevel marketing), mail fraud (including 

sweepstakes and lotteries), illegal spam, and Internet frauds (including technical support scams). 

Greisman also directs the FTC’s work to curb fraud in connection with different payment systems, as 

well as its enforcement of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Before joining Marketing Practices, 

Greisman headed the Division of Planning and Information, where she managed the FTC’s Identity 

Theft Program, the Consumer Response Center, and also supervised implementation of the National 

Do Not Call Registry. Previously, Greisman served as Chief of Staff to FTC Chairman Timothy J. 

Muris. She also served as Attorney Advisor to Chairman Robert Pitofsky and Chairman Janet D. Steiger. 

Greisman worked in private practice in Washington, D.C. before joining the FTC. Greisman received her 

bachelor’s degree from Brown University, and her law degree from George Washington University.