Based in Arlington County, Virginia, Dana R. Shaffer joined the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2006 and became a member of the federal Senior Executive Service in 2007. She has since held multiple executive leadership roles with the FCC, including Chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, Deputy Chief of the Wireline Competition Bureau, leader of Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate’s transition team, Deputy Chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, and Deputy Chief and Chief of Staff of the Office of Engineering and Technology. Arlington County resident Dana R. Shaffer has also held organizational leadership roles with the FCC, such as FCC Deputy Managing Director.
Ms. Shaffer served as the Vice President of XO Communications between 1996 and 2006, during which time she launched two of the company’s four NEXTLINK markets. In the past, she gained legal experience as a litigator at Burch, Porter, and Johnson in Memphis, Tennessee, and as a judicial clerk the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the State of Tennessee, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and the Supreme Court of the United States.
Ms. Shaffer earned her law degree from Vanderbilt University in Nashville. She was a Milton Underwood Scholar and Associate Editor of the Vanderbilt Journal of Translational Law, in addition to taking part in a wide range of moot court activities. In addition to her Juris Doctor, she earned a Bachelor of Science in Animal Science from the University of Arkansas, where she was the one student in the College of Agriculture, Food & Life Sciences to receive the John W. White Outstanding Student Award, and later completed secondary education in biology.