About GCATT

Helena Mitchell, Ph.D.
Director, Office of Technology Policy and Programs

Helena Mitchell, Ph.D is the Director of the Office of Technology Policy and Programs (OTP) for the Georgia Centers for Advanced Telecommunications Technology. She guides the development of the technology policy agenda and creates programs and services to strengthen Georgia's leadership in advanced technology. Dr. Mitchell holds the rank of Principal Research Scientist for the Georgia Institute of Technology and is the Principal Investigator and Director for a $5 million grant for a Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on mobile wireless technologies for persons with disabilities. In tandem, she directs the Innovative & Dynamic Educational Applications for Learning (IDEAL) lab, which is a collaboration of experts creating innovative technologies that span educational, community and business environments.

Dr. Mitchell was a former Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. She has held executive level positions as a regulatory and policy official for the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration in Washington, D.C. She was the former Chief of the Emergency Broadcast System; creator of innovative programs and policies to increase telecommunications opportunities and expand dialogue with advanced technology companies; and developed partnerships both domestically and internationally. Dr. Mitchell has worked in senior management, in higher education, broadcasting and in the private sector in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean.

For several decades she has authored policy, international and technology-based papers, delivered speeches, served in advisory roles and as a grants woman and recipient of funding to advance government, education and community-based initiatives. Under her leadership, her office was named Exemplary Organization of the Year at the FCC and she received the U.S. Dept. of Commerce Silver Medal for her technology policy work. Dr. Mitchell received her doctorate from Syracuse University in Telecommunications Policy.