Ann Ciganer
Vice President, Strategic Policy

Ann Ciganer joined Trimble in 1989 and became director of Government Relations. Since 1995, she has served as vice president of Strategic Policy, and has worked in the U.S. and internationally to help shape a stable and predictable policy environment for the Global Positioning System (GPS). She was a principal founder of the U.S. GPS Industry Council in 1991, and currently serves as the group's Executive Director for policy. The Council, an industry trade association, seeks to be a consensus information resource to government, the public, and media on technology in user applications and markets for national space-based systems providing positioning, navigation, and timing information. The Council interacts with international associations, such as the Japan GPS Council, to facilitate communications and cooperation in developing international industry consensus on technology and markets using Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) worldwide.

Ciganer, together with industry members, provided consensus support of U.S. Government efforts to develop a comprehensive export policy for GPS products and services. Ciganer supported the development of corporate and industry consensus positions for National Research Council, National Academy of Public Administration, and RAND Critical Technologies Institute studies on the future and management of GPS. She helped to develop Council industry positions in support of the first comprehensive national policy on GPS that was announced by the Vice President as a Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) in 1996. The PDD provided formal confirmation of the dual, civil-military nature of GPS and recognized the U.S. commitment to provide continuous availability of GPS worldwide, free of direct user fees. Ciganer, together with members of the Council, served as a consensus information resource to support Congressional efforts to include the provisions of the PDD in statutes such as the Defense Authorization Act of FY 1998.

Ciganer organized an industry team to assist the U.S. delegation at the 1997 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC 97) in Geneva in a rapid response to an international proposal to overlay a Mobile Satellite Services (MSS) communication signal on the civilian GPS signal used by millions of civilian, commercial, and allied military users worldwide. On behalf of the Council, she helped develop industry consensus input to the national process for U.S. positions on GPS receivers and applications for International Telecommunications Union (ITU) studies of the technical feasibility of this sharing proposal. These technical studies resulted in the suppression of Resolution 220 at WRC 2000 that had proposed spectrum sharing with GPS. Ciganer supported the U.S. delegation at WRC 1997; was a private sector member of the U.S. Delegation at WRC 2000; and was a senior private sector advisor on the U.S. delegation at WRC 2003. Subsequent to WRC 97, Ciganer has taken a leadership position in the U.S. and internationally to help ensure protection of the radiofrequency spectrum allocated to GPS and GNSS use on behalf of the Council. Prior to Trimble, Ciganer was a Research Analyst at SRI International's System Development Division and before that, in SRI's Center for Urban and Regional Policy Analysis. At SRI, she participated in multi-disciplinary research studies that included evaluating and recommending the selection and use of technologies for integration in the infrastructure of developing countries and including public policy recommendations to help ensure the legacy benefit. She had task leadership responsibility in international research projects in Latin America and the Asia-Pacific. She was the first president of the Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Defense Space Consortium and was chair of the Bay Area Regional Technology Alliance.

Ciganer received her B.S. in Russian studies from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and spent a semester at the University of St. Petersburg in Russia. She is fluent in French and conversant in Spanish and Russian.