Maryanne Kane, Chief of Staff, to Leave FTC After 28 Years of Service

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras today announced that FTC Chief of Staff Maryanne Kane will retire at the end of the month. The Chairman has appointed Brian Huseman, currently an Attorney Advisor in the Chairman’s Office, to be her new Chief of Staff.

“Maryanne has worked tirelessly on behalf of consumers for nearly 30 years,” Majoras said. “Her dedication to the American people and to this agency – executed with tremendous skill, determination, and grace – has set an example of the best in public service. Her sound judgment and wise counsel have been tremendous assets for me and for the entire agency.”

As Chief of Staff for more than three years, Kane has been a key advisor to the Chairman on congressional, budget, personnel, management, and strategic planning issues, and she has worked closely with the agency’s senior staff to help implement the Commission’s initiatives. Kane helped guide the agency’s consideration and implementation of the National Do Not Call Registry, and she helped craft the agency’s responses to the continuing congressional debates over pricing in the petroleum industry. She also helped manage the development and issuance of key agency reports, including those exploring the interface between competition and patent law and policy, the ways to inject a stronger dose of competition into health care policy, and the factors that affect gasoline pricing.

Before joining the FTC, Kane was an associate with the Washington, DC, office of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer, and Feld, where she handled energy, labor, antitrust, and trade regulation issues. She joined the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection in 1978 to work on food and drug advertising cases, and in 1984, she moved to the Office of the General Counsel, where she focused on congressional issues, developing the legal support for the FTC’s legislative agenda.

Kane’s commitment to pursuing an effective and productive working relationship between the FTC and the Congress has been a recurrent theme in her career, and, in 1992, she received the Chairman’s Award for outstanding work in this area. She was also a principal architect of the legislative proposals that, in 1994, provided the foundation for the FTC’s reauthorization and also for the Telemarketing Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act.

Huseman joined the FTC in 2001 as a staff attorney in the Division of Marketing Practices, where he litigated Internet fraud and telemarketing cases and worked on legislative and policy issues, including analyzing legislation, drafting congressional testimony, and meeting with congressional staff. He became an Attorney Advisor for former Chairman Timothy J. Muris in 2004, and has served with Chairman Majoras since the beginning of her term. Huseman was formerly an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, and a judicial law clerk for Judge Sven Erik Holmes in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma and then for the late Chief Judge Henry A. Politz in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Information about the Federal Trade Commission is available from the FTC’s Web site at http://www.ftc.gov and also from the FTC’s Consumer Response Center, Room 130, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20580. The FTC works for the consumer to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices in the marketplace and to provide information to help consumers spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint in English or Spanish (bilingual counselors are available to take complaints), or to get free information on any of 150 consumer topics, call toll-free, 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357), or use the complaint form at http://www.ftc.gov. The FTC enters Internet, telemarketing, identity theft, and other fraud-related complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to hundreds of civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad.