WASHINGTON – US President Joe Biden has nominated entrepreneur and broadband Internet philanthropist Jonathan Eric Kaplan as ambassador to Singapore. 

Mr Kaplan, who is in his early 50s, will have to go through confirmation hearings in the Senate. 

Mr Kaplan does not have a foreign policy background. A serial, eclectic and successful entrepreneur (the 2010 Ernst & Young Northern California Entrepreneur of the Year), he is currently chairman of  Education Superhighway, a non-profit that works to bring broadband Internet to public school classrooms.  

In 2017, he told a magazine “We’ve got 32 million… kids upgraded and have done that with a tremendous amount of help from the Obama administration and our government. Now, with the help of the Trump administration, we are just finishing up with the upgrades of the schools that are still not completed.”

He is described in the White House biographical details distributed with the nomination announcement, as as entrepreneur and innovator,  most recently chairman and chief executive officer of FishSix Restaurant Corporation.

“Prior to that, as chairperson and CEO of Pure Digital Technologies, he invented and marketed the revolutionary Flip video camera and, when Pure Digital was acquired by Cisco Systems, Kaplan became senior vice-president and general manager of its consumer products division” the bio said. 

“Earlier, Kaplan was president and CEO of Sega.com, founder and CEO of MovieStreet, vice-president and general manager of Geoworks, and vice-president of Hands On Technology” it said.

“Kaplan serves as an adviser for the Young Presidents Organisation, meeting with corporate management and government leaders in dozens of countries.”

Mr Kaplan has a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial management from Carnegie Mellon University. 

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