两会花絮：“大片”原来是这样拍成的

Dr. Catherine Adeya, a Senior Digital Transformation and Governance Specialist, is an experienced leader and advocate who has worked over 25 years in technology and development. She has rich experience across academia, civil society, government, and the private sector. Catherine was the Director of Research at the World Wide Web Foundation until November 2022. She was responsible for coordinating a global research team, dedicated to achieving a web that is safe and empowering for everyone. She oversaw the organization's groundbreaking research in areas of Internet access, privacy and data rights, and women's rights online, focused on low- and middle-income countries. Catherine has extensive knowledge of ICT for Development, and has numerous publishing and speaking credits on the topic. After her doctoral studies, Catherine began working as a Research Fellow at the United Nations University's Institute for New Technologies in Maastricht, The Netherlands, in 1998.

In 2002, driven by a commitment to tackling global inequality, Catherine moved back to Africa to advocate for the use of digital technologies to expand opportunities and drive development. She was involved in research linking ICT and poverty, critical success factors for the business process outsourcing industry, and collaborated with organizations like the International Development Research Centre. In 2005, she moved from academia to work with civil society on ICTs for Development. Catherine has also been involved in the Kenya ICT policy process since 2006 through the Kenya ICT Action Network, which was the beginning of ICT networks for participatory democracy and economic growth in Kenya.

Catherine was appointed to the first Board of Directors of the Kenya ICT Board (now the ICT Authority of Kenya) in 2007. She has also served as the Director of Business Process Outsourcing/Information Technology Enabled Services at Kenya's Ministry of ICT, in addition to serving as founder CEO of the Konza Technopolis Development Authority. She was also instrumental in the development of the East Africa Centre for Internet Governance and Policy at Strathmore University in Nairobi.

She is an independent Non-executive Director at Standard Chartered Bank Kenya and Old Mutual East Africa Holdings, where she is the Chair of the Technology and Innovation Committees (with a core focus on cybersecurity oversight). She also serves on the advisory board of the East Africa Infrastructure Platform.

Catherine received an undergraduate degree in Information Sciences from Moi University in Kenya. Her postgraduate studies culminated in a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Information and Development from Edinburgh, Scotland. She has certifications in corporate governance, Cybersecurity Audits Training, and Board Governance and Leadership Masterclass.

Catherine has executive education training in Women's Leadership from Yale University; Cybersecurity and Executive Strategy training from Stanford University; and has taken an Innovation-Driven Organizations Masterclass from the Institute of Directors in Kenya.

Catherine was selected in 2023 to serve on the ICANN Board of Directors by the Nominating Committee for a three-year term. Her term will expire at the Annual General Meeting 2026.

Alan Barrett holds a B.Sc.Eng. and M.Sc.Eng. from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (then called the University of Natal), Durban, South Africa. Alan was involved in setting up the first Internet connection for South African universities in 1990/1991. In 1993, he was a co-founder of the first commercial ISP in South Africa, then called TICSA, later Internet Africa and UUNET South Africa, where he remained until 1999. Alan then joined a small Internet firewall company, CEQURUX Technologies, where he remained until the company went out of business in 2007. After that, he worked as a software consultant. In 2015, Alan was appointed as CEO of AFRINIC, where he remained until 2019. Alan was a co-author of the 1997 proposal to create AFRINIC, serving on a steering committee tasked with creating AFRINIC, and was elected to the first AFRINIC Board in 2004, where he served until 2009. He was appointed by the AFRINIC Board to the Number Resource Organization Number Council (NRO NC) / Address Supporting Organization Address Council (ASO AC), from 2004 to 2014. During part of the IANA stewardship transition, from 2015 to 2016, he served in the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG), as an appointee of the NRO. Alan was selected by the ASO to serve on the ICANN Board in 2021. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2024.

Maarten Botterman is an independent strategic adviser on Internet governance and related issues with more than 25 years' experience in guiding governments and major organizations on the economic, business, and societal impacts of current and future Internet innovations and technologies. During those 25-plus years, he participated in and led more than 50 international projects and studies and published more than 80 peer-reviewed reports for governments and industry on Future Net issues with teams, including experts with advanced academic degrees from many disciplines, ranging from technology and mathematics to economics and law, and from many different countries and cultures.

Maarten was employed as Head of Unit and Senior Adviser to the Dutch Government (1987–1995) and as Scientific Officer to the Communications Technology Research program that was run by the European Commission (1995–1999). These years brought many insights about the public interest and governance aspects of the developing global, networked knowledge society. These insights were further deepened when working for RAND Corporation, setting up and running an Information Society policy practice in Europe (1999–2006), with an emphasis on policy evaluation and scenario planning. Since 2006, he has been working as an independent strategic adviser to governments and businesses in close cooperation with leading independent research institutions in Europe (including RAND Europe, TNO Netherlands, DTI Danmark, Inno France, and CIVIC Germany). Today, he is internationally recognized as a governance and future Internet expert and is a regular contributor to international Internet governance events such as the Internet Governance Forum, where he is leading the Dynamic Coalition for the Internet of Things.

Next to advising the Dutch government and the European Commission on Internet governance issues, he got deeply involved in ICANN's work as a Board member and Chairman of the Public Interest Registry (2008–2016), over time actively participating in more than 40 ICANN meetings. Having worked internationally since 1995, he has extensive experience in working with people from different national and cultural backgrounds, and is comfortable in engaging in English, German, French, and Dutch (mother tongue). He has a reputation as an independent, trustworthy, out-of-the-box thinker who is able to look at issues from several perspectives with strong awareness of the bigger picture. Having served on boards and having reported to boards, he has extensive experience with effective board governance and the responsibilities and obligations that come with a director's position on a U.S. nonprofit board. Over the years, he has been a frequent guest speaker and/or moderator, mostly at smart technology-related events.

Maarten holds an advanced degree in business economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is a certified coach and has a certificate in medical-based knowledge, both of which help in better understanding of what drives people in decision-making and going through life. In addition, he has completed several board excellence trainings with internationally renowned institutions, including Harvard Business School, INSEAD, IMD, MIT, Yale School of Management, and Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. His areas of interest include government, civil society, and technology.

Maarten is based in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He was nominated to serve on the ICANN Board by the Nominating Committee in 2016 and served as Board Chair from 2019 until 2022. His third and final term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2025.

Chris Buckridge is an independent consultant, analyst, and commentator in the Internet governance and digital policy space. He worked for more than two decades with Regional Internet Registries, starting with the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre in 2003, before joining the Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) in 2006. During his tenure at the RIPE NCC, he helped develop the organization's engagement in public policy and Internet governance, working closely with institutions including the International Telecommunication Union, the OECD, and the United Nations.

In 2015, Chris served a member of the Australian government delegation to the WSIS+10 review. Since 2016, he has served as a member of the EuroDIG Association Board, and has been actively engaged in national and regional Internet governance initiatives across the RIPE NCC service region (Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia) and beyond. In 2021, he was appointed to the Multistakeholder Advisory Group or MAG of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum, where he will complete his third and final one-year term in 2024. Chris holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland in Australia.

Chris was selected in 2023 by the Generic Names Supporting Organization to serve a three-year term on the ICANN Board of Directors in 2023. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2026.

J. Beckwith (“Becky”) Burr is a partner at Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis, LLP, a Washington, DC law firm. Her practice focuses on data protection, data governance, and cyber security. Prior to joining the firm, Becky was Neustar’s Deputy General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer. In that capacity, she was responsible for implementing the company’s “privacy by design” program, and ensuring that the company maintained state-of-the-art privacy and data security to protect customer and consumer information. As an expert on Internet governance issues, Ms. Burr also provided policy and legal advice related to the company’s provision of Internet domain name registry services.

Becky joined Neustar in 2012 from the Washington, DC office of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, where she was a partner in the Communications, Privacy and Internet Law Practice Group and the Financial Institutions Practice Group. Her practice was both regulatory and transactional, focused on e-commerce, information technology, intellectual property licensing, and international regulation of communications and information technology. She was recognized as a Nationwide Leader in the Privacy and Data Security field in the 2007- 2012 editions of Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers in Business (Global 2011-2012) and selected by her peers for inclusion in the 2007- 2012 editions of The Best Lawyers in America, in the area of information technology law.

Prior to joining WilmerHale, Becky served as the Associate Administrator and Director of International Affairs and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), where she was responsible for the privacy and Internet governance work streams described in the Clinton Administration’s Framework for Global Electronic Commerce. She also served as an Attorney Advisor at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from 1995 – 1997, where she participated in developing the FTC’s approach to competition, consumer protection, and privacy/data protection in the digital marketplace. Becky’s history with ICANN dates back to 1997 when she headed NTIA’s Office of International Affairs and participated in the U.S. Government (USG) team that produced the so-called “Green Paper” and “White Paper” on privatization of the domain name system. As head of NTIA’s Office of International Affairs, Becky was responsible for recognizing ICANN on behalf of the USG in 1998, and for negotiating the original Registry Agreement and Registrar Accreditation Agreement. She served as the U.S. representative to the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) in ICANN’s early years and, after leaving the USG in late 2000, represented registries, registry operators, and registrars in their dealings with ICANN as a lawyer in private practice. In that capacity, Becky represented individual sponsored and new gTLD applicants, as well as the Registrar Stakeholder Group in negotiating the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement.

From 2006 through 2016, Becky served on the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) Council, first as a Nominating Committee (NomCom) appointee, and more recently as the representative of .US. Becky received a BA from Yale (1977), and a JD from Georgetown University Law Center (1987). She was selected by GNSO to serve on the Board commencing at the Annual General Meeting in 2016. Her term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2025.

Nicolas "Nico" G. Caballero is a Data Analyst and ERP Software and Domain Name System (DNS) expert, serving as an ICT Adviser at Paraguay's Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies (MITIC). He is also currently serving as President of Centro de Emprendimiento e Internet de América Latina y el Caribe (CEILAC) DNS Center in Asuncion. Nico was a direct ICT Advisor for the office of the President of Paraguay, and as such he coordinated: the demonopolization of Internet service in Paraguay; the establishment of the Digital TV Standard (ISDB-Tb); the creation of the ICT Ministry, SENATICS; and the team that drafted the first Paraguayan civil satellite program, which in turn, led to the establishment of the Paraguayan space agency.

Nico was the founder of the Internet Society (ISOC) Paraguay Chapter and served as its first President. He was also the first Paraguayan GAC Representative. In parallel, he served as the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Regional Initiative Representative in the country, where he organized the first IGF meeting in 2014. Nico was further responsible for the extensive capacity- building work carried out by the ICT Ministry, in particular the Memorandum of Understanding with ICANN in 2016–2017. He coordinated the establishment of the CEILAC DNS Center, as a cooperation agreement between SENATICS, the Latin American and Caribbean Country Code Top-Level Domain Association, and ICANN, which remained operative within the structure of MITIC.

Nico was also responsible for organizing key IT events in Paraguay: the ICANN DNS Roadshow,

ISOC Chapter events, and Chapter projects aimed at developing connectivity in rural areas, providing digital training and IT infrastructure to high schools, and providing Internet connection, e-commerce tools and digital training for Native Indigenous people in remote areas. In 2017, he moved to the private sector, and in 2022 resumed his role as the Paraguay GAC Representative at ICANN74 in The Hague, Netherlands. At ICANN76 in Kuala Lumpur, Nico was elected GAC Chair, marking the first time a Latin American representative has held the position.

Nico studied English at Pittsburgh State University in Kansas, USA; Computer Science at Universidad Autonoma de Asuncion in Paraguay; and E-Government at Konkuk University in Seoul, Republic of Korea. He also holds an Electric Car Technologies Diploma from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

He is fluent in Spanish, English and Portuguese, and also speaks French and Italian. Nico loves rugby, plays classical guitar, and is also a 4th Degree Black Belt in Taekwon-Do.

Sarah Deutsch is a practicing attorney with considerable experience on Internet policy and related legal issues. Sarah worked for over 23 years at Verizon Communications as Vice President and Deputy General Counsel in its Legal Department. She managed the company’s global intellectual property practice and team of legal and technical personnel responsible for trademarks, domain names, copyrights, patent licensing and portfolio management and unfair competition issues. Her responsibilities included federal, state and international matters involving counseling, litigation, and Internet policy, including close coordination with Verizon’s technical teams and engineers.

Sarah has served as a subject matter expert in Verizon’s Legal Department on Internet issues since the mid 1990s. She has extensive experience in IP policy, online liability issues, privacy, cyber-security and consumer protection issues and related advocacy before the US Congress, federal agencies, state legislatures, and global bodies including WIPO, OECD, and other legislative and regulatory bodies. Sarah was the first attorney to oversee Verizon’s Privacy Office, including managing its Chief Privacy Officer, privacy attorneys and staff. She was a Lecturer of Law at Harvard Law School, teaching a class in online privacy in 2019.

Sarah was one of five negotiators for the U.S. telecommunications industry in the negotiations that led to the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. She also served as a Private Sector Advisor to U.S. Delegation to the WIPO Copyright Treaties and to the G8 Cybercrime Conference. Sarah was the 2014 recipient of the Managing IP In-House Counsel Award at the American Women in Business Law Awards. In 2009, she received the Public Knowledge President’s Award for Extraordinary Dedication to Protecting the Free Flow of Information Over the Internet.

Sarah has been involved in ICANN issues since its inception, working on numerous issues over the years with the Business Constituency and the IPC. She has also coordinated closely with the ISPCP. Sarah served as the Business Constituency’s Commercial Stakeholder Group representative, and also represented the BC on the Nominating Committee. She currently serves on the Board of the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, the nonprofit Edgemoor Research Institute and the nonprofit National Center for Health Research.

Prior to joining Verizon, Sarah was an associate in the law firm of Morgan, Lewis Bockius. She holds a J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law and a B.A. from Emory University. She was nominated to serve on the ICANN Board by the Nominating Committee in 2017. Her term will expire at the Annual General Meeting 2026.

Dr. James Galvin has over three decades of experience in secure and robust operations in all aspects of networking and the life cycle of a domain name. He currently serves as Identity Digital, Inc. Director of Strategic Relationships, applying this experience to the development of technical standards and policies in support of strategic initiatives to advance secure and robust operations. James began his career in 1989 developing Internet Standards in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for secure email, secure network management, and DNS security, which are still applicable and in use today. He continues to be an active participant in the IETF where he currently serves as Co-Chair of the Registration Extensions Protocols Working Group, the working group currently responsible for all Internet Standards related to the operation of domain name registration services and the protocol interactions between registries and registrars. He has been part of ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) since 2002, and served as its Vice Chair for seven years until December 2017. He has served the ICANN community as chair of various technical expert working groups and has engaged in multiple PDPs. He is currently active in the Registry Stakeholder Group DNS Abuse Working Group, the contracted party’s technical operations working group (CPH TechOps), and the CPH RDAP working group. James is a Pioneering Member of the Internet Society, and served as its Vice President of Chapters and Individuals from 2002 until 2005. He has been a member of both the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) since the early 1980s. James was appointed to serve as the SSAC’s non-voting liaison to the ICANN Board on 28 October 2021.

Wes Hardaker is a Senior Computer Scientist at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute and is responsible for overseeing teams to develop and execute research ideas. He is principally responsible for the operation and management of the Internet’s Internet’s b.root-servers.net [b.root-servers.net] domain name system critical infrastructure.  His research focuses on enhancing the DNS, network management, routing and other Internet protocols, and studying malicious actor behaviors through intrusion detection. Wes has been actively participating in the Internet Engineering Task Force open standards body that documents Internet protocols for roughly 25 years, and he currently sits on the Internet Architecture Board. Within ICANN, Wes is the principal representative for b.root-servers.net [b.root-servers.net] in the Root Server System Advisory Committee.

Wes was appointed to serve as the RSSAC’s non-voting liaison to the ICANN Board beginning in September 2022.

Byron Holland (MBA, ICD.D) has been the President and CEO of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) since 2008. An expert in Internet governance and a seasoned entrepreneur, he has C-level experience in private and not-for-profit sectors. Under Byron’s leadership, CIRA has evolved from a single-service registry to a globally recognized, multi-product, commercial not-for-profit. Now one of the leading country code top level domains (ccTLDs) in the world, CIRA manages over 3.4 million domains, with more than 30% of the world’s TLDs using its domain name system (DNS) services. Byron represents CIRA internationally in global policy work and has played a pivotal role in shaping key Internet governance decisions, holding prominent leadership positions within the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), including Chair of the Customer Standing Committee, and serving as both Chair and Vice Chair of the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO). He also served on the nominations committee for the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) from 2019-2022. Byron currently sits on the Board of Directors as Vice Chair of TorIX, Canada’s largest internet exchange point and as Treasurer of the Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries. The ccNSO selected Byron in March 2025 to serve on the ICANN Board. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2027.

As Vice President of Technology at Akamai Technologies, Christian Kaufmann leads the Technology department, which is responsible for driving the technical evolution of the Akamai Edge platform, including a wide set of responsibilities like hardware engineering, data center architecture, network architecture and engineering, and software and systems development.

Christian has extensive experience in corporate governance, including hiring Chief Executive Officers and handling mergers and acquisitions. He has served on various other boards over the last 15 years, including at Internet Exchanges and the Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC).

Before joining Akamai, Christian worked in various technical and managerial roles at several Internet service providers and carriers, including Telia Sonera, Easynet, and Cable & Wireless.

Christian has a Master of Science in Advanced Networking from The Open University in the U.K. He also holds various technical certifications, including Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) and Juniper Networks Certified Internet Expert (JCNIE) certifications.

He was nominated to serve on the ICANN Board of Directors by the Address Supporting Organization (ASO) in 2022. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2025.

With his regular participation in both the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and ICANN, David has sought to bring together policy and technology in a pragmatic way.

David started his career on the Internet at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the mid-1980s, where he acquired the nickname "tale" by which is he known by many in the industry. He soon became involved with Usenet governance, and served for nearly a decade as the caretaker of the Usenet newsgroup creation process. He co-authored the O'Reilly book "Managing Usenet" with Henry Spencer.

Following his stint at UUNET as the Usenet newsmaster and FTP archive maintainer, David joined the Internet Software Consortium (ISC) in 1997 where he was a member of the team that rewrote the popular DNS server BIND and started participating in the IETF.

He moved with several of his coworkers to the ISC spinoff company, Nominum. At Nominum, David became deeply involved in Internationalized Domain Name development, and also attended his first ICANN meeting.

David joined Akamai Technologies in 2005 and spent 13 years as a senior developer and architect on the proprietary nameserver that powers Akamai's content delivery network. In 2010, he was selected as one of the Trusted Community Representatives for the DNNSEC Root Key. He was a past board member of DNS-OARC and currently is a board member of CVFiber, which focuses on bringing fast, reliable, and locally managed Internet to north central Vermont.

David lives with his wife, Sarah, and twins, Jack and Abby, in the mountains near Montpelier, Vermont.

David was appointed to serve as the IETF’s non-voting liaison to the ICANN Board on 14 November 2024.

Kurt Erik “Kurtis” Lindqvist is a seasoned technology executive and business leader who became President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on 9 December 2024. With more than 30 years of experience in engineering and business development of Internet service providers, Internet Exchange Points, and global network carriers, Lindqvist has dedicated his career to advancing the stability, security, and accessibility of the Internet.

Prior to joining ICANN, Lindqvist served as CEO of the London Internet Exchange (LINX), a leading operator of worldwide interconnection services, from 2019 to 2024. Prior to this, he was CEO of Netnod from 2002 to 2015. Lindqvist also chaired the European Internet Exchange Association (Euro-IX) from 2003 to 2020, which underscores his long-standing leadership in Internet infrastructure organizations.

Lindqvist has been a leading voice in Internet governance (IG) and technical development. He served on the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and led working groups within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and RIPE, where his efforts helped shape critical Internet standards and policies. Additionally, he has advised the Swedish government on IG, broadband policy, and other key areas, fostering collaboration between public and private sectors.

Lindqvist studied Computer Science at Uppsala University, Sweden, and holds an Executive MBA from the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Patricio Poblete was born in Chile in 1952 and obtained a degree in Mathematical Engineering from the University of Chile, and a M.Math. and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo, Canada. In 1975, he was one of the founders of the first Department of Computer Science in Chile, at the University of Chile, where he is currently a Full Professor. He has a long list of scientific publications, most of them in the fields of Data Structures and Analysis of Algorithms. He is also an Internet pioneer in his country, having started the first email network connecting Chilean universities to the world, and later participating in the connection of Chile to the Internet. Since 1987, the Department of Computer Science of the University of Chile took on the responsibility of managing the registry for .CL, the domain name registry for the Republic of Chile. Over the years, this grew and became NIC Chile, one of the oldest and largest registries in Latin America. Patricio has led NIC Chile since its founding. As representative of NIC Chile, Patricio participated in the International Forum of the White Paper (IFWP) process that led to the creation of ICANN, then served as a member of the Names Council of the Domain Names Supporting Organization (DNSO), until it split into the GNSO and the ccNSO. For many years he was a member and vice-chair of the ccNSO Council, and has participated in various working groups, notably the Framework of Interpretation (FoI), the ccPDP Retirement WG and the Meetings Program Standing Committee (MPC). In 2017 he received the ICANN Multistakeholder Ethos Award, jointly with his colleague Hiro Hotta. On the regional area, he was one of the founders of LACTLD, the Latin American and Caribbean ccTLDs Organization. In parallel with his work with NIC Chile and with the ICANN community, Patricio is a leading engineering educator in Chile, and served as director of the School of Engineering and Science of the University of Chile for 14 years. He has received many awards for his work in the field of Engineering Education and he has recently been selected as a member of the Chilean Academy of Engineering. He was selected to serve on the ICANN Board by the ccNSO for the term 2020-2023 and renewed for the term 2024-2026.

Sajid Rahman is a multidisciplinary leader who has worked in the financial services, health care, renewable energy, and technology sectors. He served as Managing Director at Standard Chartered Bank at locations across Asia and Africa. Later, Sajid founded a social business in health care, serving over five million people. Currently, he is the Managing Partner of MyAsiaVC – a venture capital firm investing in the second-order impacts of macro trends. He is also the founder of industry-scale renewable energy projects.

Sajid is an experienced board member. He is the Chair of the Audit Committee of a public-sector bank and adviser to a number of startups. He is an architect of an accelerator program for rural entrepreneurs and subject-matter experts. He is a well-known business strategist and capable change agent with over 20 years of experience at the senior management level and 10 years of experience at the board level, managing transformation and growth agendas.

Sajid is a writer on technology trends and has been published regularly in tech journals. He is a notable speaker at global forums on health, technology, and financial services organized by Financial Times, Bloomberg, Mobile World Congress, Royal School of Medicine, Fortune Magazine, etc.

Sajid has a master's degree in Commerce and is a scholar of the Financial Times Non-Executive Director diploma program.

He was nominated to serve as an ICANN Board Director by the Nominating Committee in 2022. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2025.

León Sánchez is an intellectual property attorney graduated from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City. He also completed postgraduate studies in intellectual property at the UNAM and Internet Law at Harvard Law School. Since 2006 he has been a partner at Fulton & Fulton, a law firm specialized in intellectual property and IT law based in Mexico City, and is Head of the Intellectual Property division. Mr. Sanchez also serves on the Board of Directors for Trustnet Corporate Group, ISDI Mexico and several other non-for-profit organizations in Mexico. Since 2008 Mr. Sanchez is professor of Intellectual Property at the UNAM Law School. He has been an advisor to different Government bodies, including the Digital Strategy Coordination Office of the Mexican Presidency, the Special Commission on Digital Agenda and IT of the Mexican House of Representatives and the Science and Technology Commission of the Mexican Senate. He drafted the Internet Users Rights Protection Act for Mexico and has been very active on issues like ACTA, SOPA, TPPA and other local initiatives of the same kind, always advocating to defend users’ and creators’ rights in order to achieve a balance between regulation and freedom. Mr. Sanchez has served in ICANN as the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) Vice-Chair and Co-Chair of the Cross Community Working Group (CCWG) on Accountability where he has been deeply involved with the IANA Stewardship transition process. Mr. Sanchez was elected by the At-Large community to be its designated Director on the ICANN Board of Directors from 2017 to 2020. He was elected by the At-Large community of individual Internet users worldwide to serve as an ICANN Board Director for a three-year term (November 2017 - November 2020).

Ambassador (ret.) Miriam Sapiro is a non-resident Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Throughout her career, Miriam has worked successfully with governments and international organizations around the world to address complex challenges at the intersection of international and domestic policy. She has served in senior roles in the U.S. government, including at the National Security Council (NSC), the State Department, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and in the private sector and NGO community. Upon confirmation by the U.S. Senate with the rank of Ambassador, Miriam was Deputy and then Acting U.S. Trade Representative, leading negotiations and enforcement to improve U.S. competitiveness, secure labor and environmental rights, and advance innovation. She also served on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).

Miriam’s government experience spans Democratic and Republican administrations and includes working in the White House at the NSC as Special Assistant to the President and Counselor for Southeast European Stabilization and Reconstruction, and as Director of European affairs. She began her career at the State Department as an international lawyer before joining the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff. In that role, she helped negotiate the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia.

In addition to ICANN, Miriam is on the board of directors of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), which strengthens democracy by supporting fair and transparent elections around the world. She has served as the inaugural Polis distinguished fellow at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, the chief executive officer and president of the NGO alliance InterAction, and a member of the Supervisory Board of Lufthansa. She also co-led the Washington, DC offices of two strategic communications firms, Finsbury and Sard Verbinnen.

Miriam has been involved in the ICANN community since 2001, reflecting a deep familiarity with and commitment to ICANN’s mission and preserving the multistakeholder model. She has worked on issues ranging from country code top level domain (ccTLD) redelegation requirements to evaluation of new generic top level domains (gTLDs) and further expansion of the domain name system (DNS). She was an active participant in the inaugural Internet Governance Forum in support of ICANN’s continued independence and later worked to support the milestone of transferring stewardship of the IANA functions from the U.S. Department of Commerce to the global Internet community.

Miriam received her BA from Williams College and JD from the NYU School of Law, and she was a Rotary fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University.

Miriam was selected in 2024 to serve on the ICANN Board of Directors by the Nominating Committee for a three-year term. Her term will expire at the Annual General Meeting 2027.

Amitabh has over four decades of corporate and non-profit work experience of which for nearly three decades he has held senior management positions in the telecommunications industry, as well as leadership positions at various non-profit Internet and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). He has worked throughout his career in voluntary capacities, gaining leadership experience in the networking, domain name system, IP addressing and ICT4D spaces.

During mid 1990’s and early 2000’s, Amitabh served as Senior Vice President and Group Head of Corporate Affairs at GTL Limited, a Network Infrastructure company, where amongst other things, he was involved in helping build some of the first privately run Data Networks in India to provide Email/Electronic Data Interchange services. Prior to this in mid 1980’s, Amitabh was involved in introducing computers in several government and public sector organizations.

In 1994-95, Amitabh cofounded and was Secretary and President of the ISP Association of India, where amongst other initiatives, he helped draft and adopt key Internet policy and licensing terms which shaped India’s acceptance of principles surrounding an open and free Internet. He was also the ISP sector’s key spokesperson for nearly a decade and represented the sector throughout industry and the media.

Amitabh conceived and founded the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) in collaboration with the Government of India. Under his stewardship, as Founder and CEO, NIXI set critical Internet infrastructure projects, including the first Internet exchanges across the country. In addition, he was instrumental in leading the successful relaunch of the .IN ccTLD Registry and setting up India’s first root instances between 2003 and 2005.

Amitabh helped train and build local capacity to enable India’s initial engagements with regional Internet organizations, and worked with the government to enable hosting of the first APNIC, IGF and ICANN public meetings in India.

For eight years, Amitabh served as a Board member of Public Internet Registry (PIR) that manages .ORG, serving as Board Secretary for five of those years. While on the PIR Board, he was very active in PIR’s introduction of new top-level domains.

Amitabh has a demonstrated track record in advocacy, policy and regulatory development work, corporate management, board governance, marketing and business development, industry-government liaison, project work, startups in Solar, Disaster Management and Power sector, legal and compliance work, altogether in multicultural and multilingual environments. One of his more recent memorable work endeavours was assisting the Afghan Ministry of Communications to launch their first ever IXP services (NIXA) in Kabul in 2018.

Amitabh is also currently working on an initiative to develop a technical platform to improve trust and security in the Internet, as well as leading a team to develop a standard for the Network Maturity Assessment Model at the Bureau of Indian Standards.

Amitabh has both a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Laws Degrees, along with Post Graduate Diploma in Marketing & Sales. He is also a Certified Board Director by the Institute of Directors in India.

Amitabh was nominated to serve on the ICANN Board by the Nominating Committee in 2024. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2027.