William Kovacic

William E. Kovacic has served on the Federal Trade Commission since January 2006, and served as Chairman from March 2008 until March 2009. He has also served, since January 2009, as Vice Chair for Outreach of the International Competition Network.

Before he became a Commissioner, Kovacic was the FTC’s General Counsel from 2001 through 2004, and also worked for the Commission from 1979 until 1983, initially in the Bureau of Competition’s Planning Office and later as an attorney advisor to former Commissioner George W. Douglas.

Kovacic was the E.K. Gubin Professor of Government Contracts Law at George Washington University Law School, where he began teaching in 1999. He had taught at the George Mason University School of Law since 1986, after practicing antitrust and government contracts law for three years at Bryan Cave’s Washington, DC, office. Earlier in his career, Kovacic spent one year on the majority staff of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee.

Beginning in 1992, Kovacic was an adviser on antitrust and consumer protection issues to the governments of Armenia, Benin, Egypt, El Salvador, Georgia, Guyana, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, Panama, Russia, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.

Kovacic received a bachelor degree from Princeton University in 1974 and a law degree from Columbia University in 1978. He and his wife, Kathryn Fenton, reside in Virginia.