Julius Genachowski and his family join President Obama in the Oval Office after Genachowski’s swearing-in as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
Genachowski is chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). His wife, Rachel Goslins, a documentary filmmaker, is executive director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. She produced and directed the acclaimed independent film, Bama Girl, about a young African American woman at the University of Alabama who runs for homecoming queen while combating “The Machine,” a secret association of white fraternities that controlled campus politics.
Their house is comfortable, unpretentious, and neat. Their children, Lilah, 5, and Aaron, 3, are curious, but well behaved. They get a little squirmy as a photographer attempts to pose them for a family picture. Genachowski gets them to settle down and smile for the camera by telling them to say “pizza” while their motherpromises a chance to watch a “SpongeBob SquarePants” video.
Genachowski also has a son, Jacob, 18, from his first marriage. He boasts that Jacob was a star quarterback for the Maret School’s Fighting Frogs this year. It was a great season for the Frogs, he says, explaining that they beat their rivals, The Potomac School and Sidwell Friends.
Genachowski and Goslins are no strangers to Washington. “I’ve been here since 1985 and Rachel has been here for 15 years. We have “deep ties,” they explain, completing each other’s sentences. They met on a blind date at Ruperts, a restaurant that was near the Convention Center, and then, in an only-in- Washington scenario, ended up at the Lincoln Memorial. Goslins said they went looking for the typo on the wall that exists in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.
On the next date, Genachowski continues, they bicycled to Alexandria. A park in Old Town is important to them because, one day short of the anniversary of their first date, Genachowski drove Goslins there to propose. The wedding took place in 2001 at Big Sur in California, Goslins’ home state. Genachowski, who grew up on Long Island, N.Y., is a policy wonk with a keen understanding of the power of new technology. He urged Obama to take full advantage of the Internet, a strategy that ultimately raised record-breaking contributions for his friend’s presidential campaign.
The son of Eastern European Jews who fled the Holocaust, Genachowski, 47, is an energetic man with boyishly good looks. Expressing mock annoyance, his pert, svelte wife points out that she is seven years younger, but that on their first date he got carded and she didn’t. Her husband’s youthful appearance, however, belies a man with a staggering résumé. He worked in the high tech industry for 10 years and co-founded LaunchBox Digital and Rock Creek Ventures. He also was a senior executive at IAC/InterActiveCorp, Barry Diller’s e-commerce and media company.
He clerked for Supreme Court Justices William J. Brennan and David Souter as well as for Chief Judge Abner Mikva at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Other career landmarks include jobs with Sen. Chuck Schumer (when he was still in the House of Representatives) and for the House Select Committee investigating the Iran-Contra Affair.
As FCC chairman, Genachowski is back at the agency where he was chief counsel to FCC chairman Reed Hundt from 1994 to 1997.
Goslins, a 1995 graduate of UCLA’s law school, is another over-achiever. After receiving her degree, she worked for the U.S. Copyright Office, representing the government at the World Trade Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. She was working there when she met Genachowski and he supported her leaving the law to become a filmmaker.
“I don’t regret giving up the law,” she says. “I missed being creative. Documentary making is a great intersection between substance and creativity.” That career path led to Bama Girl. Her latest work, God’s House, tells the story of Albanian Muslims who saved several thousand Jews during World War II. “The Muslims hid the Jews and not a single one was surrendered to the Nazis,” she explains. The film has been submitted for consideration at the Sundance Film Festival.
Goslins says she has put her filmmaking on hold now that she is executive director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. Membership on the panel, of which First Lady Michelle Obama is honorary chairwoman, consists of officials from federal agencies having cultural programs such as the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Department of Education, the Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Art, and the Kennedy Center. Its prestigious committee includes cellist Yo Yo Ma; actors Sarah Jessica Parker, Edward Norton, and Forest Whitaker; prize-winning architect Tom Mayne; and philanthropist Teresa Heinz.
Their children are still quietly watching “SpongeBob SquarePants” but Goslins warns there is only about 20 minutes left on the video. “They don’t get to watch much television,” she explains, “so that when they do they are quiet.”
Like many parents caught up in the demands of Washington, they say that family is their first concern. Such a comment may be predictable Washington boilerplate, but with this couple, it rings true. They find the capital’s circuit stimulating, Goslins says, because it “always offers the opportunity to meet somebody fascinating.”
Apart from their “official” lives, they are active in the Adis Israel Congregation and support Save the Children and a number of environmental causes while still finding the time to renovate a new home, also in Cleveland Park. Genachowski says he is not interested in a future run for political office and Goslins knows she will eventually return to independent film making, although that seems a long way off right now.
They seem more than capable of being both FOBs and a popular power couple and are out-and-about on the arts/political/social circuit, albeit on their own terms. Goslins says she is comfortably resigned to dining out on numerous evenings in her uncomfortable shoes.
