Kathryn Kleiman teaches Internet Technology & Governance for Lawyers at AUWCL. For three years, 2019-2022, she also taught in the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic as Practitioner-in-Residence. 

Most recently, Ms. Kleiman published Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World’s First Modern Computer (Grand Central Publishing, July 2022) based on her longtime research and interviews of the six ENIAC Programmers. These six women programmed ENIAC, the world’s first general-purpose, programmable, all-electronic computer, as part of a secret US Army project during and after WWII and their work is a fascinating part of military, home front, mathematical, technical and women’s history.  

Ms. Kleiman is a recognized leader in Internet policy and governance. She was part of the group that formed the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), co-founded of ICANN’s Noncommercial Users Constituency, and served on the final drafting of ICANN’s Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (global rules for domain name disputes and world’s first fully-online dispute forum).   

Ms. Kleiman has worked on and led many Internet policy task forces, working groups and review teams including serving as Co-Chair for ICANN’s Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms Policy Development Process Working Group, 2016-2020, and Vice-Chair of ICANN’s first WHOIS Review Team, 2010-2012.  

Before joining academia, Ms. Kleiman worked in the law firm of Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth in Arlington, Virginia where she led the Internet Law & Policy Group and handled a wide range of Internet law and policy matters for companies, non-profit organizations, and individuals. Prior, Ms. Kleiman served as Director of Policy for The Public Interest Registry and helped to oversee policy and abuse issues of the then-nine million domain names in the .ORG top level domain. 

Her research interests include Internet governance, STEM policy pipelines to foster diversity in Internet/tech policy leadership, development of private multistakeholder models for technology policy coordination and oversight, protecting intellectual property, free speech and fair use online, studying cross-border data flows and data privacy laws, and supporting additional work in ethics and artificial intelligence oversight. She speaks on these issues in forums around the world, including convenings of lawyers, technologists, and law enforcement. 

Ms. Kleiman joined AUWCL after having served as a Visiting Research Scholar with Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy (2018-2019). She is currently a Senior Policy Fellow with AUWCL’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property and a longtime Fellow with AU’s cross-community Internet Governance Lab.  

Education

B.A., Harvard University; J.D., Boston University School of Law