Technology: Kevin Richards

By Kristin Coyner, CQ Staff

SAP America Inc., a subsidiary of German business software firm SAP AG, has recruited TechAmerica’s chief lobbyist for the past two and a half years, Kevin Richards, as a director of government relations. TechAmerica is a trade association for companies such as SAP.

Richards (BILL CLARK/CQ ROLL CALL)

Richards is a veteran of technology policy who managed TechAmerica’s U.S. policy team and helped set strategies on a number of issues, including proposals in Congress to overhaul the immigration system and legislation on cybersecurity. SAP has more than 12,000 employees in the United States, and it supports legislation that would allow for more foreign workers to be hired and retained. (The Senate immigration bill that passed in June would expand the number of H-1B visas that many tech companies use to bring foreign workers to the United States temporarily.)

Other issues, of course, will be new, but part of Richards’ value to SAP will be to help the company develop new relationships and policy strategies on the Hill — he will be the company’s third registered lobbyist — and in the White House.

“SAP is trying to raise its game,” he says. “They’re involved in a lot of areas because they’re involved in a lot of cutting-edge technologies — big data, cloud computing, cybersecurity.”

Before TechAmerica, Richards, 43, was director of government relations for computer security firm Symantec from 2008 to 2011. He was an economic policy adviser to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy from 1997 to 2005, and was an aide to the senator in the 1990s.

Lori Sherwood

Denver-based law firm Kissinger and Fellman has opened an office in suburban Silver Spring, Md., and has hired telecommunications attorney Lori Sherwood to develop a practice for technology companies and local governments that want representation in Maryland and in the capital.

Sherwood was broadband program director for Howard County, where she helped administer a $100 million grant from the 2009 stimulus law to build a broadband network for schools and public entities in Maryland. She is a board member of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors along with her firm’s vice president, Kenneth S. Fellman.

Sherwood will divide her time between Maryland and Washington, where the firm’s issues include broadband deployment proceedings before the Federal Communications Commission and ways that clients might get federal grants.

Before working for Howard County, Sherwood, 42, helped manage state and congressional races for Democrats in Maryland, including Rep. Albert R. Wynn’sprimary loss to Rep. Donna Edwards in 2008.