By: Laura Phillips
Ryan Wallach is currently a Senior Vice President, Legal Regulatory Affairs, and Senior Deputy General Counsel at Comcast Corporation. In that role, he helps lead the team responsible for providing legal counsel to Comcast’s Federal and State Government Affairs and Regulatory teams and to the Policy and External Affairs teams, as well as various business groups whose work implicates regulatory matters. The scope of his areas of responsibility extends from the FCC, DOJ, and FTC, to the 40 states, the District, and the various localities where Comcast operates. I’ve known Ryan for some time and I was delighted to have coffee with him recently to discuss his perspectives on changes in communications law and policy and careers.
Q: What attracted you to the field of communications?
A: After I graduated college in Colorado, I spent a year in DC doing a bunch of cobbled together jobs before deciding to return to Colorado Springs and there I started working in sales at US West Paging and Cellular. As part of my new employee training, I was given a copy of the 1984 AT&T Modification of Final Judgment (MFJ) that governed the breaking up of the Bell System. Not sure how many of my co-workers read the MFJ from beginning to end, but I did and it sparked a fascination with the communications industry. I worked in sales for three and a half years before going to law school at George Washington University, which at the time was located a mere four blocks from the FCC.
Q: Tell us about the various places you’ve worked through the years.
A: After my sales gig at US West, my next communications related job was interning for the FCC Cable Services Bureau in the summer of 1996, shortly after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 became law and during the numerous rulemaking proceedings that the FCC had to complete within 180 days. After my summer as CSB, I was hired as an intern for Chairman Hundt and I continued in that role in the office of Chairman Kennard through the Spring of 1998, except for when I was a Summer Associate at Cole Raywid & Braverman and Dickstein Shapiro. Throughout law school, I also was the research assistant for Professor Jerome Barron who taught Constitutional and Media law. After law school, I clerked for Judge Harold Greene – the judge who handled the entire Bell System breakup – on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and then went on to clerk for Judge Clyde Hamilton on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. I joined Willkie Farr & Gallagher’s communications group in August 2000 and worked there until August 2012 when I moved to Comcast Corporation where I have been ever since.
Q: Have things unfolded in your career more or less the way you planned?
A: I don’t think I ever had a long-term plan other than being engaged in doing communications law and policy. There were some predefined paths in my career where I had to plan, e.g., applying for internships at the FCC, applying for clerkships, or applying to be in private practice at a law firm. That said, where I ended up may have been more a product of happenstance or being in the right place at the right time combined with a strong work ethic that was the product of my parents and my twin brother’s mentorship in law school. I have a deeply instilled belief that my job is to do whatever I need to do in order to get things done.
Q: What’s the most interesting or challenging thing that you’ve done in your current position?
A: That is a hard one to answer. I have been blessed with great mentors and bosses who have consistently thrown new challenges my way to help push me to get better and gain experience. Some of the more challenging projects have been working on regulatory approvals for transactions, dealing with investigations of clients by various parts of the government, and lately working on deployment grant policies; yes all things BEAD.
In thinking about what has been the most interesting to me professionally, I’d have to say working to support and achieve regulatory transaction approvals tops the list because it requires coordinating closely with a bunch of business teams and trying to explain to policymakers why what the business wants to do is good for consumers and the country. There are a lot of different aspects to handling all this successfully and that represents a means to stretch yourself professionally.
Q: Is or was there something interesting or someone who surprised or impressed you during your career and why?
A: My bosses, all of whom became mentors, really impressed me. From Professor Barron to the folks at the FCC to the Judges to the partners at Willkie to Lynn Charytan and Frank Buono at Comcast, who are forces of nature at times, all of them have been genuinely caring people. Besides being incredibly talented colleagues, they are truly interested in and care about me and my personal life as much as they care about my work output. After getting to know them, I can’t say I am surprised.
What has surprised me in my career is how quickly issues in communications law evolve and arise. I think that is part of what I love about communications law, i.e., new issues keep coming up as technology evolves.
Q: What do you enjoy reading?
A: For work, orders and decisions that come out my clients’ way are always the most enjoyable, especially if they include and address arguments I helped develop. For leisure, I love sci-fi and fantasy books, to escape to other worlds with other people’s problems. I was an early George R.R. Martin follower and read much of the Game of Thrones series repeatedly up until they started the HBO series, which got ahead of the books for a bit, so I stopped until they finished the TV series and then finished the books before watching the series. Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, now also an Amazon Prime TV series, was another I loved, though some of the books in the middle dragged on. I am now reading Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives series.
Q: Is there something (a hobby or other tidbit) people don’t know about you that you are willing to share?
A: My life is sort of an open book, so I think most people know that I love beer (and bringing beer to conferences for after the bars close), working out early in the morning to get my head squared away for the day, watching sports (my girls’ sports, rugby, and CAPS hockey are the primary ones), dancing, and food (cooking and eating). As far as hobbies, if sitting in my backyard and grilling while reading and listening to music can be a hobby, then that might well be mine.
Q: Can you share your perspective on the pitfalls to avoid or other career advice for those who are just getting started in the communications field?
A: Things you should DO: Work hard, be a sponge and take in as much as you can, try to be nice to everyone, but always be genuine.
Things to AVOID: office politics, being the subject of those politics, missing deadlines, relying on AI too much (it may not be as intelligent as it claims or you think, and it lies and is not flawless).
Q: How has your life changed as a result of COVID-19?
A: COVID confirmed what I knew before, which is that I can be just as productive working remotely as I can in the office. Employers’ willingness to be more flexible about work location was a benefit for us all. That said, I also understand the desire to have a functioning office environment, especially to help educate and mentor younger employees. So, like many things, it’s all about finding the right balance while still doing your best possible work always.
Q: How long have you been an FCBA member, and what to you is the value of FCBA membership?
A: I think I was a student member of the FCBA during law school, so my guess is I joined in either 1997 or 1998, and I then became a full-fledged member in 2000 after my clerkships concluded. The initial value was educational and social: educational in that I could go to all manner of luncheons, CLEs, and conferences and learn a lot about the communications industry; social in that the happy hours, luncheons, and conferences were great, and I got to meet a lot of people who all had many of the same professional interests that I had.
As I got further into my career, the FCBA provided me with ways to experience leadership opportunities outside of my workplace, which unquestionably helped to improve me, and by extension, my career. The long-term value has been getting to know and enjoy an amazing group of colleagues in the same general legal field as me. There is nothing like this group and the access it can provide to a giant pool of knowledge. It has made me a more well-rounded (experientially not physically, despite my love of beer and food) and for sure, a better attorney.