Joe Kochan

Joe Kochan is the Executive Director of the National Spectrum Consortium, where he leads the 400+ member coalition of wireless technology companies and researchers to promote American leadership on advanced wireless information technology. NSC provides a provide a forum for collaboration and helps fund and create breakthroughs in spectrum- and spectrum-dependent capabilities for the Department of Defense and other federal agencies.

Joe most recently served as the CEO and co-founder of US Ignite, responsible for leading the organization in its mission to accelerate the smart community movement as a high-tech, high-impact nonprofit. He was also Principal Investigator and Project Director for the Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) Project Office (PPO), a $100 million program funded by the National Science Foundation and a consortium of more than 35 wireless companies and associations. He continues to serve as a volunteer on US Ignite’s board of directors.

Prior to US Ignite, Joe worked as federal program officer in the Department of Commerce’s BTOP grant program. Before that, he was a co-founder and Vice President–Operations at DigitalBridge Communications (DBC), a startup dedicated to bringing broadband wireless services to small, underserved markets nationwide. Joe is an alumnus of Princeton University and lives in Washington, DC with his wife and two sons.