DR. BEN SCOTT
Based in Berlin, Ben Scott is a co-founder of Stoake and leads the firm’s technology policy practice. Ben’s career has spanned academia, civil society, government and business, and he is an accomplished policy expert, public speaker, and political strategist.
Prior to Stoake, he was Policy Adviser for Innovation at the US Department of State, where he served in a small team of advisers to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The focus of his work was to help develop and steward the 21’st Century Statecraft agenda — a new foreign policy framework to address the power of network technologies.
Prior to joining the State Department, for six years he led the Washington office for Free Press, the largest non-profit organization in the US dealing exclusively with public interest advocacy in media and communications policy. He was frequently an expert witness before the US Congress and served in the tech/media/telecom advisory group in the Obama 2008 presidential campaign. Before joining Free Press, he worked as a legislative aide handling telecommunications policy in the U.S. House of Representatives.
He holds a PhD in communications from the University of Illinois. He is currently affiliated with the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute in Washington, the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung in Berlin, and Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society.
JASON FLIPPEN
Jason has spent his career supporting businesses and government organizations solve complex challenges. He is a founding partner of Stoake where he advises global leaders on technology and innovation issues and works with them to advance special initiatives. He has launched divisions within large enterprises as well as start-ups, including a bootstrapped e-commerce brand that was acquired by a venture-backed firm.
Prior to Stoake, Jason was Special Advisor for Innovation in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of State where he worked to expand the use of technology to support America’s diplomatic and development goals. His work focused on cyber affairs, building a culture of innovation, and advancing the use of network technologies (web, mobile, social media) across nearly 150 countries. He also served as the senior advisor to the US Ambassador to Russia on technology and innovation.
Before joining the State Department, Jason was a consultant to the Council on Foreign Relations where he led a capabilities assessment and provided strategic advising to the executive leadership. For a decade prior, he worked at W.W. Norton & Company, a New York based publishing firm, where he held a number of leadership positions and launched the marketing and business development division for educational technology, helping the firm enter new markets, transition from print to digital, and outperform industry averages for growth.
MIKELL OMEALY
Mikell is an international climate change and sustainable development specialist with more than 20 years of experience working at global, national and local levels. She leads the firm’s Sustainable Development, Environment & Climate Change practice with a focus on strategic planning, partnerships, investment and finance to increase ambition toward achieving Paris Agreement targets and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Clients include United Nations organizations, multilateral development banks, donors and governments at the forefront of these global goals.
Prior to Stoake, Mikell was as a Climate Change Advisor and Environment Officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and a Senior Associate at Abt Associates, serving in field positions in the Eastern Caribbean, Asia Pacific and Russia.
She is a frequent speaker and facilitator at global and regional events and was a Delegate to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties in Madrid, Spain in 2019 (COP25) and Katowice, Poland in 2018 (COP24).
ASSOCIATES & PARTNERS
Stoake works with a global network of associates and partners to bring the right mix of talent to each client engagement. They include technologists, innovation consultants, data scientists, geopolitical advisors, technology policy experts, digital media strategists, researchers, and world-class trainers. They are diverse in their backgrounds and expertise, but share a few things in common: they are exceptional problem solvers, intellectually curious, and have proven records of achieving results.
