An Interview with Andrew Byrnes, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, PresenceLearning

Let’s begin with you describing your experiences as Chief of Staff of the United States Patent & Trademark Office.

It was a fantastic experience. The team from Director Michelle Lee on down was truly top notch and I worked on a broad range of really high impact matters every day. I spent a lot of my time overseeing the operations of the agency, including legal, HR, and IT, on behalf of the Director. The rest of my time was focused on policy and public engagement work, for example, working with an interagency team on patent reform, and speaking to groups around the country about the agency and the Administration’s efforts to promote innovation. It really was an incredible two years.

This was the first time you worked in a government agency, correct? How did your varied work experiences in the run up to that opportunity help prepare you for it? What, if anything, surprised you when you got there?

Correct, this was my first time in government as an employee. From a professional perspective, I’ve long lived at the intersection of technology, business, law, and policy. While the PTO is definitely a different configuration of those elements, in many ways it was quite consistent with the work that I had done. Being an IP litigator focusing on patents for 16 years gave me pretty significant insight into patents and the IP world. Alongside that, I had been active in politics for a long time. While the PTO is perhaps somewhat less political than many other agencies in Washington, it certainly was helpful to understand some of the players and processes about how things get done in government. More generally having been involved in the community really gave me insight into opportunities for collaboration and ways of being a leader in an organization that would bring people along rather than divide them. That was all very helpful preparation for the role.

Now, in terms of surprises, as in life, no matter how familiar you are with something from the outside, it’s often not exactly what you expected when you get to the inside. And in this case, the surprise came with the Chief of Staff role itself. It is not a common role outside government. Even though I went in thinking the role would be broad and impactful, it surprised me just how broad and impactful the role really could be. I credit some of that to Director Lee, who became director after I started, because she is a very hands-on person with a lot of goals and initiatives. I had to keep up with her. So that was both wonderful and not entirely expected.

There is, sometimes, an undercurrent or theme in some of the political statements some people make, to the effect that motivation, effort, inspiration, and other things that help an organization prosper are more abundant in the private sector than in the public sector. I wonder whether, with all of your private and public sector experience, you have any reaction?

There certainly are different sets of incentives in the public and private sectors. One important aspect of the public sector—and this is true of the PTO—is that it’s an agency that is directed toward the interests of all Americans and, through its international work, the global innovation community. Ultimately, few in the private sector can have that same breadth of focus and commitment. So if you believe that you’re particularly innovative and you have all of the answers and the right way of doing things, you may be frustrated because not everybody in government is immediately going to see your view. And even if your colleagues do, there may be others in the public who are coming at it from a different perspective. That, I think, is an important thing for folks to understand about the PTO—while there are many stakeholders who are directly involved in the patent system and who engage with the agency, there are others who benefit from what the PTO does but may not even know the agency’s name. Those folks are on the mind of Director Lee and her team and were on my mind as well.

Thinking further about incentives, in the private sector, financial incentives are much more common and lucrative than they are in the public sector. The private sector is more geared toward considering doing things differently than they’ve been done in the past, and it’s faster moving. I think a challenge in the public sector—the PTO included—is to keep up with that innovation.

So, I wouldn’t discount entirely the notion that more innovation happens in the private sector or that there are more incentives for innovation in the private sector. But, I don’t agree with the premise that there is a binary system where if you’re in the private sector you’re pro-innovation and if you’re in the public sector, you’re not. Because I worked with over 12,000 people at the PTO and many more in other agencies who demonstrated daily the public sector’s interest in protecting and facilitating innovation.

A couple of questions relating to your chief of staff role: What was the confluence of circumstances that led to your appointment, and what observations would you offer to our readers who might like to consider a similar path?

I have been involved in both IP and politics a long time. As a volunteer with President Obama’s reelection campaign, I would talk about the election being an “all hands on deck” moment for the country. While I had intended to stay at Covington & Burling after the election, following the President’s victory, it struck me as discordant to continue doing what I had always done and not get “on the deck.” The President’s team and I discussed how I could be helpful and, some months later, those discussions matured into an offer to join the Administration.

There’s no prescription for how to equip oneself to obtain and then succeed in such a role. But it’s critical to put yourself out there. Developing substantive expertise in a field is a great start, but it is also important to connect and collaborate with members of the legal and business communities as well as the broader community beyond the people that you see every day. Position yourself as someone with the skills and networks to be effective in different settings and then be open to opportunities as they arise.

Let me turn to your current role, back in the private sector, as Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer of PresenceLearning. You’ve moved back to the Bay Area from DC. How’s it been? Tell us about the company, and tell us about your role.

It has been phenomenal. Coming back to the Bay Area after two years was great. I really enjoyed working with Director Lee and the whole team, so it took something pretty exciting to get me to leave. So, as I like to say, I got to go big and go home.

My first job back in Silicon Valley was as general counsel at Shuddle, an early stage venture-backed startup that pioneered ridesharing for kids, helping busy families book safe and reliable rides with caregiver-drivers. The company had a passionate following but shut down because we couldn’t raise another funding round in a difficult market. I had a great experience, though, and now have the credibility that comes in Silicon Valley with having been part of a failed startup!

I am really excited now to be at PresenceLearning, a mid-stage venture-backed startup telehealth company that helps people unlock their potential by democratizing access to life-changing care. Using our proprietary technology platform, licensed clinicians provide live online speech language, occupational, and behavioral and mental health therapies and assessments in educational and health care settings. Think of a speech therapist in front of a computer in her home providing speech therapy to a child with special needs sitting with an aide in front of a computer in a school hundreds of miles away. There are nationwide shortages of these clinicians so we enable those in need to receive high quality services that otherwise would be unavailable or inadequate to the child’s need, placing at risk the school’s compliance with federal mandates and civil rights laws. It’s exciting to be at a company that is innovative at its core, fast-growing, and obsessed with making a difference.

Are you missing the in-depth treatment of intellectual property issues you got to enjoy in your past life?

Well, I haven’t written a Markman brief in a while and that’s not a bad thing. My role now is multifaceted. I oversee legal, regulatory compliance and government affairs as well as people operations. I also have a role in business development and partnerships. So, it’s very broad. In terms of IP, we’re focused on building the brand. Certainly our trademark portfolio is a critical part of that. We’re also continually improving our technology for delivering our services and administering our systems. I want to ensure that we’re protected IP-wise, whether the technology is licensed or homegrown, so it’s important to have the right agreements and maintain our trade secrets. So, in that sense, IP remains in the forefront of my thinking.

What’s the typical day like for you now?

Well, one new experience for me is a real commute—since I live in Silicon Valley and commute to San Francisco, this is the longest commute of my professional life. Otherwise, there really is no typical day. One day could start out working on an agreement to provide speech therapy and assessment services to a school district in the Midwest. Other days focus on evaluating regulations like state Medicaid reimbursement rules or clinician licensing requirements, and determining whether we want to advocate for changes. Still other days are focused on HR matters, whether developing personnel policies or launching a new employee engagement initiative. I also spend a lot of time out of the office meeting with community leaders and prospective partners, letting them know about the company and our services. So, as I say, there’s really no typical day. The only thing that’s typical about them is they tend to be long, and involve time on trains or in cars.

There’s one more topic I’d ask you about. You’re in a very unique position now, with what you’ve described as a fairly small company; you’re new; you wear multiple hats. Would you comment on your perspective on the use of outside counsel services at PresenceLearning? What do you look for, what do you seek to avoid, what other things might our private practice readership like to know?

Particularly since my role is so broad and we operate nationwide in a fairly heavily regulated space, I often find myself confronted with issues for which outside counsel and their more specialized expertise would be helpful. At the same time, PresenceLearning is still an emerging company. Our budget for legal services is comparatively small. I need outside counsel who know the answer right away or can find it with only a little additional research. Another factor is familiarity with the company. Thankfully, PresenceLearning was working with several great firms before I joined the company. But I’ve also engaged new firms due to their particular expertise or value proposition.

I also continue to focus on finding a demographically diverse set of outside counsel. As we get larger, that scale will help us further implement that strategy. I have long been committed to diversity in the law. Now, as a corporate client for the first time, I can put money where both my mouth and now PresenceLearning’s mouth are.

This has been a very informative and enjoyable interview, and we look forward to sharing it with our readers. Thank you so much for taking the time.