A resident of Chicago who lived in President Obama’s Hyde Park neighborhood, Strickling grew up the son of Edward Strickling, a University of Maryland agronomy professor, and Cloria Stickling. He graduated from the same school Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in economics in 1973, and then earned his JD from Harvard Law School in 1976.

 

Early in his career, Strickling was a litigation partner at the Chicago law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. He then worked for several years at Ameritech, a regional Bell holding company, eventually moving up to the position of vice president and associate general counsel in 1990 and vice-president of public policy in 1993, a position he held until September 1997, when he was named chairman of the Federal Communications Commission’s local competition enforcement task force.

 

From 1998 to 2000 he was chief of the FCC’s Common Carrier Bureau, which dealt with local and long-distance telephone companies. He focused on such issues as deregulation, increasing competition and increasing broadband speeds

 

In September 2000, he took over as executive vice-president and general counsel for St. Louis-based Internet backbone start-up CoreExpress, Inc. He became a member of the board of directors of Network Plus, an East Coast voice and data communications provider, in March 2001. He joined Allegiance Telecom in August 2002 as vice-president in charge of industry development.

 

Strickling then worked as chief regulatory and chief compliance officer at Broadwing Communications for from Sptember 2004 until April 2007.

During the 2008 presidential race, Strickling was a policy coordinator for Obama’s campaign, during which he oversaw two dozen domestic policy committees and was responsible for technology and telecommunications issues.

 

Strickling has served on the board of visitors at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, as chairman of the board of trustees at the University of Chicago’s Court Theatre, and as treasuer of the board of directors of Music of the Baroque in Chicago.

 

Strickland is married to Sydney Hands, a professor at the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration. The couple has three sons.

 

Lawrence Strickling (National Telecommunications and Information Administration)