Neustar President and CEO Lisa Hook to visit campus

Lisa Hook '83, president and CEO of Neustar, will present “The enormous opportunities and challenges of the Internet age—and why lawyers are essential to ensuring the stability of the global digital economy” on Tuesday Oct. 16 at 2:30 p.m. Hook will be in University Park to accept a 2012 Penn State Alumni Fellow Award—the most prestigious award given by the Penn State Alumni Association—in recognition of outstanding work in her field. 

A universal intermediary, Neustar, Inc. is a leading information and analytics company based in Sterling, VA. Hook once analogized the company to a “giant digital address book in the sky.” Every phone call in North America and about twenty percent of all Internet traffic goes to Neustar before reaching its final destination. “If you call me, your phone number has no brain. It goes out onto the network and it has nowhere to go. So your phone call literally comes to our database and says, ‘Where do I go?’ and we tell it where to go,” Hook said. (Read more.)  

With more than twenty-five years of senior executive experience spanning the communications, media, and entertainment industries, Hook has held leadership positions at a number of Fortune 500 companies, including president of AOL Broadband and AOL Anywhere; chief operating officer for Time Warner Telecommunications, and chief counsel for Viacom Cable. She was a partner at Brera Capital Partners, LLC, a New York-based private equity fund, and managing director at Alpine Capital Group, LLC. 

Hook serves on the boards of directors of Reed Elsevier PLC (a FTSE 100 Company) and Reed Elsevier NV; is a director of the Ocean Foundation; and serves on the board of directors of the Greater Washington Board of Trade. Previously, she served on the boards of Covad Communications Group Inc., Time Warner Telecom Inc., National Geographic Ventures, and K-12, Inc., and on the Board of Trustees of the National Public Radio Foundation.

In 2011, President Barack Obama named Hook to the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, a group that advises the White House on national security and emergency preparedness issues relating to telecommunication services. The Washington Business Journal honored Hook with their “Women Who Mean Business” award in 2010. In 2007, Hook was an honoree of DirectWomen, a program designed to identify, develop and support select accomplished female attorneys to become directors on the boards of U.S. companies. 

This event will be held in the Greg Sutliff Auditorium in Lewis Katz Building, University Park, PA, and simulcast to the Apfelbaum Family Courtroom and Auditorium in Lewis Katz Hall, Carlisle, PA.