President-elect Joe Biden’s desire to hit the ground running on his first day in office is being aided by some Seattle-area professionals with tech backgrounds who have been named to his agency review teams.

Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris released the names Tuesday of individuals who will help the incoming administration understand the operations of agencies including the Departments of Commerce, Education, Defense, State, Transportation and many more.

Among those named with Seattle tech and science ties:

  • Mark Schwartz, Amazon Web Services, enterprise strategist (Office of Management and Budget)
  • Tom Sullivan, Amazon, international policy team (Department of State)
  • Nicole Isaac, LinkedIn, senior director North American policy (Department of Treasury)
  • David Kaslow, PATH, chief scientific officer (Department of Health and Human Services)

Other’s on the list have connections to Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, DropBox, Dell, Lyft and Stripe, according to CNBC.

According to Biden’s transition website, the Presidential Transition Act requires the “most recent employment” and “sources of funding” for all agency review team members to be disclosed. The team has three types of members: volunteers acting in their personal capacity; full-time transition employees funded by the Presidential Transition fund; and detailees, who will be funded through an appropriation administered by the General Services Administration.

The Biden administration will have a number of tech policy issues on its plate, including the Justice Department’s antitrust complaint against Google and ongoing government scrutiny of other tech giants such as Facebook and Amazon.

Tech leaders have shared some of their hopes and concerns on Biden’s ability to make progress on several key tech-related issues, including equitable broadband access, the long-term impact of AI and automation, and issues of digital privacy and security.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story had an incorrect title for Amazon’s Tom Sullivan.

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