ERIK HUEY, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs, ESA Since 2009, Erik Huey has served as the Senior Vice President for Government Affairs at ESA, the trade association representing the business interests of interactive entertainment software publishers and console makers. In this capacity, Erik manages a team of seven employees and fifty outside consulting firms and oversees all federal and state government relations as well as strategic partnerships for the $23 billion U.S. video game industry. During his time at ESA, Huey has helped successfully guide the videogame industry through two major challenges by orchestrating the government affairs campaign in support of its historic free speech victory in the U.S. Supreme Court, and by developing the strategy and managing the day-to-day response to numerous legislative efforts to restrict the industry’s creative expression and distribution model. For nearly two decades, Huey has been at the center of high profile and controversial policy debates affecting the technology, media and telecommunications industries, including issues like combating digital theft of copyrighted content, media ownership, expanding broadband deployment, and preserving creative freedom and First Amendment rights. Born outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, Huey graduated cum laude with a B.B.A. from the University of Miami and with a J.D. from the University of Notre Dame Law School. Outside of work and politics, Erik pursues two creative passions as a screenwriter and as the lead singer of The Surreal McCoys, his Americana rock band, which recently put out its second, original full-length album and regularly performs live.