Bertram Lee
*Bertram Lee was born on January 21, 1939. He was a Black public policy administrator and lawyer.
Born in Lynchburg, Virginia, Lee was raised in a public housing project. His father, William, was a teacher, and Lee told the New York Times's William C. Rhoden that while his family was not affluent, neither were they poor, just "an average American family." After finishing high school, Lee moved to Naperville, Illinois, to study at North Central College. Bertram received his B.A. from Haverford College and J.D. from Howard University School of Law.
After earning his degree in 1961, he took a civil service job in Chicago. A period in the U.S. Army between 1963 and 1965 interrupted that career, but Lee returned to City Hall to hold various posts in the administration of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley. Lee was Senior Policy Counsel, Data, Decision Making, and Artificial Intelligence at the Future of Privacy Forum, where he led FPF's work on artificial intelligence. Previously, Lee was Counsel for Media and Tech at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, where he worked to advance the interests of marginalized communities in technology and media policy.
In 1989, he and his business partner Peter Bynoe were the first African Americans to buy a controlling interest in a National Basketball Association (NBA) team when they purchased a 37.5% share of the Denver Nuggets basketball team. His portfolio included broadband access, media diversity, facial recognition, law enforcement surveillance technologies, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, algorithmic bias, artificial intelligence, content moderation, and platform accountability.
Previously, Bertram worked as Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge and served as Policy Counsel at the U.S. House Committee for Education and Labor under Chairman Robert C. Scott. Bertram Lee died of a brain aneurysm on October 7, 2003, in Washington, DC.
