Print edition: 
WASHINGTON — One of the sexiest men alive is working for the Federal Communications Commission. So are a retired rear admiral, an ex-aide to Bill Gates and the founder of a Web site to help people find "a spiritual path."
They are among more than two dozen non-lawyers and beyond-the-Beltway employees assembled by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who took over the agency in June after being nominated by President Obama.
Genachowski's FCC may be "the most curious regulatory commission in the history of regulatory commissions" as it fires off scores of official inquiries, said Jeffrey Eisenach, chairman of Empiris LLC, a Washington economics consulting firm.
"They are conducting, I think, the most complete review of communications policy in decades," said Eisenach, who teaches college courses on regulated industries. "The potential for better policy is there. The potential for big mistakes is too."
The FCC made its biggest splash under Genachowski this week when it unveiled a program to make the U.S. Internet system "the communications network of the future." The agency sent the plan, which would cost at least $16 billion, to Congress on Tuesday.
Yul Kwon, 35, brought the public's voice to the Internet project as an FCC consumer advocate. Kwon made People magazine's list of sexiest men in 2006, the year he was the winner on "Survivor," the CBS reality show that pits contestants against one another in primitive locales.
The FCC "offered me bathrooms and promised me I wouldn't have to catch any chickens," said Kwon, who has degrees from Stanford University and Yale Law School and once worked in Google Inc.' s business strategy and operations group.
Also among Genachowski's recruits are retired Navy Rear Adm. James Barnett, 56, chief of the FCC's bureau of public safety and homeland security; Steven VanRoekel, 40, the agency's managing director, who came from Microsoft Corp.; and Steven Waldman, 47, founder of beliefnet.com, which offers prayers and commentary to help users seeking spiritual guidance. Waldman, a former Newsweek correspondent, heads an FCC task force on the state of the media.
There are also Joel Gurin, 56, a former executive for Consumers Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, who is chief of the consumer and governmental affairs bureau; chief diversity officer Mark Lloyd, 55, a former official with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; and Stuart Benjamin, 44, a Duke University School of Law professor who is the FCC's first scholar in residence. His job includes providing legal advice and ensuring the agency considers a wide variety of views.
The diversity contributes to "a vibrant marketplace of ideas" that helps the agency "get to the best policies," Genachowski, 47, said.
Genachowski's own resume includes Harvard Law School, which he attended with Obama, and serving as general counsel at IAC/InterActiveCorp., the Internet company controlled by Barry Diller.
