APRALO: 2014 Singapore Showcase 

 

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Fadi Chehadé, President and CEO of ICANN

Fadi Chehadé's career has been defined by building consensus and promoting collaborative technologies and practices. He has more than 25 years of experience in building and leading progressive Internet enterprises, leveraging relationships with senior executives and government officials across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the United States.

Chehadé, age 50, is a citizen of Egypt, Lebanon, and the United States. He was born in Beirut, Lebanon, to Egyptian parents and left the then war-torn country in 1980 at the age of 18. He speaks fluent Arabic, English, French, and Italian.

Most recently he served as Chief Executive Officer of Vocado LLC, a U.S. firm that is a provider of cloud-based software for the administration of educational institutions.

Prior to Vocado, Chehadé was CEO of CoreObjects Software, Inc., a leader in new product software development services for both large and growing companies. He oversaw the expansion of the company to include more than 400 engineers and its successful acquisition by Symphony Services.

Prior to his role at CoreObjects, Chehadé served as the General Manager of IBM's Global Technology Services in the Middle East and North Africa. Based in Dubai, he led a team across an emerging region experiencing high growth. He also built and managed a new global business for IBM, providing managed services to large clients in telecommunications, aerospace and retail to improve the accuracy, depth and timeliness of business information visibility across demand and supply chains.

Chehadé founded and has led three companies since 1987:

• Viacore, launched in 1999, was the world's leading B2B process integration hub offering a complete solution of specialized software and services for global 500 companies. In 2006 he led Vicaore's successful acquisition by IBM.
• RosettaNet, a non-profit multi-stakeholder company founded in 1997. Chehadé rallied all the leading ICT companies in the world including IBM, HP, Microsoft, SAP, Nokia and Oracle to collaborate on B2B standards. RosettaNet became the high-technology industry's leading eBusiness standards consortium. RosettaNet adopted a multi-stakeholder approach to define and standardize a complete inter-company process language, enabling the ICT sector to use the Internet for real-time process synchronization between thousands of trading partners.
• Nett Information Products, launched in 1987 to create and develop an Internet-based content management and sharing solution, successfully weaving hundreds of ICT suppliers and thousands of their resellers into a powerful collaborative business web of applications and content. Ingram Micro the world's largest ICT distributor acquired Nett, where Chehadé became vice president of its Customer Information Services Group.

Chehadé is a graduate of Stanford University, where he earned a master's degree in Engineering Management. He earlier earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from Polytechnic University in New York, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude.

Fadi Chehadé is also the founder of Nilorado, a youth organization raising funds to support schools for handicapped children in Upper Egypt, also delivering bicycles to boys and girls from needy families in that region who otherwise cannot reach their schools.

Chehadé lives in Los Angeles with his wife of 25 years. They are the parents of two adult sons.

 

Steve Crocker, Chairman of the Board of ICANN

Dr. Crocker is CEO and co-founder of Shinkuro, Inc., a start-up company focused on dynamic sharing of information across the Internet and on the deployment of improved security protocols on the Internet.

Dr. Crocker has been involved in the Internet since its inception. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, while he was a graduate student at UCLA, he was part of the team that developed the protocols for the Arpanet and laid the foundation for today's Internet. He organized the Network Working Group, which was the forerunner of the modern Internet Engineering Task Force and initiated the Request for Comment (RFC) series of notes through which protocol designs are documented and shared. For this work, Dr. Crocker was awarded the 2002 IEEE Internet Award. Dr. Crocker also holds an honorary doctorate in mathematics from the University of San Martin de Porres in Lima, Perú.

Dr. Crocker's experience includes research management at DARPA, USC/ISI and The Aerospace Corporation, vice president of Trusted Information Systems, and co-founder of CyberCash, Inc. and Longitude Systems, Inc. His prior public service includes serving as the first area director for security in the the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the IETF Administrative Support Activity Oversight Committee (IAOC), service on the Board of the Internet Society and the Board of The Studio Theatre in Washington, DC.

Dr. Crocker earned his B.A. in mathematics and Ph.D. in computer science at UCLA, and he studied artificial intelligence at MIT.

Steve Crocker was selected by the 2008 Nominating Committee to serve as a Board Member. He had been Chair of ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) from its inception in 2002 until December 2010, and he served as SSAC's non-voting Liaison to the ICANN Board until being selected by the Nominating Committee. His first term ran from the end of the 2008 annual general meeting through the conclusion of the 2011 annual general meeting. He was selected by the Nominating Committee to serve a second term, starting in October 2011 and running through the Annual General meeting in 2014.

Steve served as Vice-Chair from December 2010 until June 2011. At the organizational meeting following the regular ICANN Board meeting on June 24, 2011, Steve was elected Chair of the ICANN Board. He was re-elected Chairman of the Board at the organizational meeting held in Dakar on 28 October 2011.

 

Olivier Crépin-Leblond, Chair of the ALAC

Dr. Olivier M.J. Crépin-Leblond is a French national who has been an Internet user since 1988. He received a B.Eng. Honours degree in Computer Systems and Electronics from King's College, London, UK, in 1990, a Ph.D. in Digital Communications from Imperial College, London, UK, in 1997, and a Specialized Masters Degree in Competitive Intelligence and Knowledge Management from SKEMA Business School (ESC Lille & CERAM) in Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France, in 2007.

Having founded Global Information Highway Ltd in 1995, he took part in many Internet projects, several of which enabled Internet connectivity in developing countries.

Whilst attending all ICANN conferences in person since the Paris (June 2008) meeting, he has taken a keen interest in supporting ICANN's At-Large community. He was selected to be on the 2010 ICANN Nominating Committee (NomCom) and was Secretary of ICANN's European At-Large Organisation (EURALO) from June 2010 until March 2011.

He was selected as Chairman of ICANN's At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC), at ICANN's Cartagena, Colombia meeting in December 2010, a yearly term renewed at ICANN's Annual General Meeting in Dakar, Senegal in October 2011 and again in Toronto in October 2012 (this time for a 2 year term). Through serving the At-Large Community, he has gained a unique practical experience in an operational multi-stakeholder policy-making environment, finding and building consensus at grassroots level.

In March 2013 he was selected to sit on the second ICANN Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT2).

He was recently invited to speak in the United Kingdom, Sweden (EuroDIG Stockholm), several universities in Southern India (on matters of IPv6, Internet History and Core Values) as well as teaching at the Summer School on Internet Governance in Meissen, Germany (Multi-stakeholder Governance) and taking part in the third Ukrainian IGF in Kyiv on behalf of the Council of Europe and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in November 2012.

In December 2012 he was part of the United Kingdom delegation to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) in Dubai.

Whilst Chairman of the English Chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC) since March 2012, he is also a Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) affiliate since the early nineties.
Full details available on: http://www.gih.com/ocl.html

 

Siranush Vardanyan, Acting Chair and Vice-Chair of APRALO

Siranush Vardanyan currently holds the position of Public/Private Partnerships, Program Officer at Save the Children International. Prior to this job, she held different managerial positions in Habitat for Humanity Armenia, Project Harmony Armenian Branch, working in Armenia School Connectivity Program project, which aimed at integration of ICT into education sphere in Armenia. She graduated from the Yerevan State Institute of Foreign Languages with Diploma with Honors, holding MS in History and English. She has completed all required exams for her PhD (all but dissertation) titled "Innovative Programs in Secondary Schools of Armenia" at the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia. She has several articles, published in local and international journals, related to her research work.

Siranush has more than 20 years' experience of working with international organizations in Armenia, as well as 8 years of teaching English language as a senior lecturer at Yerevan State Humanitarian College. She is a Salzburg Seminar Fellow and participated in Academic Core Session: "International Legal Perspectives on Human Rights", in Salzburg, Austria and also Central European University alumni with participation at the course: "Human Rights and Forced Displacement: An Interdisciplinary Approach", in Hungary, Budapest.

Since 2007 Siranush has been actively involved in Internet Governance issues. She is a Diplo Foundation Alumni, being a part of on Capacity Building Program on Internet Governance in 2007, participated in the First European Summer School on Internet Governance. In 2008 Siranush was one the members of Internet Governance Caucus (IGC) Nomination Committee for Multistakeholder Advisory Committee (MAG). She is an ICANN Fellowship Program Alumni, as well as ISOC Ambassador for IGF 2010 and ISOC Returning Ambassador for IGF 2011.

During her professional career Siranush has developed an extensive managerial, communication and project implementation skills.

 

Cheryl Langdon Orr, 2014 NomCom Chair

Thirty(ish) years ago Cheryl left her Post-Grad research and career as a tutor in Physiology (continuing as Teaching Associate at the Asia Pacific Research Institute of Macquarie University during the early 2000 years) to operate her family owned micro enterprise, Hovtek Pty. Limited.

Cheryl is a telecommuter, and licensee of domain names in .au as well as in the global DNS, but most importantly, she is an avid end-user of the Internet for work and recreation. Fourteen years ago she started a spin off project called BuildersNet which was developed from some of the TQM (ISO-9002 etc.,) activities of Hovtek; ten years ago this became a stand alone Australian Company, (Pty. Ltd.,) and relies totally on the Internet to facilitate its operation.

Her clients in Australia are Micro Businesses and SMEs - and internationally mainly SMEs and Government or Aid Funded bodies; she serves and communicates with them almost exclusively online and the majority of her importation of raw materials and products as well as export documentation bookings etc. is now handled that way. She is a Director in several Associations and a NFP company interested in Global Trade and SME growth, facilitated by Internet use, under the auspices of UNCTAD.

She believes the Internet should be seen as a public asset and needs to be developed and maintained as a cost-effective and accessible resource for communication, education, community, social and business opportunities by the Australian and wider global community; her work within ICANN with its remit as the coordinator of the unique identifiers (addressing) across i.e. in the Naming, Numbering and Nomenclature within the Internet Ecosystem with its commitment to a multi-stakeholder, bottom-up consensus driven policy development model is an essential part of this aim.

Her focus and ongoing interests are not specifically technical but rather more consumer and end user focused. Until May 2009 when the Council was dissolved she represents ISOC-AU in the Australian Communication Alliance Consumer Advisory Council with a keen interest in Policy Development, Access, Outreach and Regulatory issues.

She was an Individual Member (prior to the formation of our Chapter) of ISOC and am a Director of ISOC-AU since being elected in 2001 serving as Hon Treasurer from 2003, and currently serve as the Hon. Company Secretary on the executive. For more about my role and about the other Directors of ISOC-AU, see http://isoc-au.org.au/Organisation/Dirs.html.

She is a Member of auDA, having been re-elected as a Board Member for my forth term of office in the Demand Class (User Interests) stakeholder category in October 2012 for a 5th 2 year term. Previously she has worked on several auDA Policy Advisory Panels between 2000 and 2004, and as the Chair of the Domain Name Industry Code of Practice Committee.

In 2008 and 2009 in addition to her work within APRALO and ALAC and specifically within the arena of communications consumer advocacy in Australia she was instrumental in the formation of a new National peak body to act as a co-ordinated voice of communications consumers Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN).

She is also a member of several organisations and associations including Women On Boards and Women in the Boardroom; the TED community and the International Sustainable Development Resource Centre, Geneva; and as an individual and corporate representative in ACCAN. Additionally she has had engagement in Australian Government Policy Development includes active participation in Govt 2.0; Public Sphere activities specifically in Australia; and continue to serve as a consumer advocate representative to the Australian Communications Compliance (CommCom) Advisory Committee a new independent code monitoring (and reporting) body, that is to ensure that Carriage Service Providers (CSPs) in Australia are compliant with the Telecommunications Consumer Protection (TCP) Code, since appointment in late 2012.

In addition to being:

• an active member of the NSW Chapter of Females in Information Technology and Telecommunications (FITT);
• recently been appointed as the Chair of the 2014 ICANN Nominating Committee;
• the 2013 NomCom Chair-Elect." until end November 2013 and the ALAC Liaison to the ccNSO (2010 -2013), the previous Vice Chair of the ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) 2010-2011), after three terms (2007-10) as the ALAC Chair;
• representative of ISOC-AU as an ICANN accredited At-Large Structure (ALS) in ICANN's Asia Pacific Regional At-Large Organisation (APRALO) and also as an APRALO representative to the ALAC, (2007 - 2011) within ICANNs At-Large Community;
• appointed to serve on the 1st Affirmation of Commitments Review Team for ICANN looking at Accountability and Transparency;
• on a number of Policy Working Groups, Work Teams and Task Forces.

For more information, please see Cheryl's online bio page.

 

Fouad Bajwa, Vice Chair of APRALO

Fouad Riaz Bajwa is an ICT and Internet Public Policy Analyst, Researcher and Advocate from the beautiful city of Lahore, Pakistan. He has been contributing to the ICANN Community since 2009. Fouad has been working towards guiding global ICT public policy at the multilateral and bilateral levels consulting on policy issues as an ICT Expert occasionally with various United Nations bodies etc. He serves as a Principle Digital Rights Policy Advisor for a national level digital and human rights protection body in Pakistan.

He was recently working as a Senior Public Policy Analyst developing an IT Industry Development policy and advice for a fragile developing country in South Asia. For the past 17 years, he has been working in the domain of ICT Industry development, Information Technology IT-sector development, Internet and DNS Industry Development, mass capacity development initiatives and promoting the usage and adoption of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). He has also acted as the Webmaster for the Pakistani government.

Mr. Bajwa is leading the Internet Research Project Pakistan IRP2 and his organization's work on the Pakistani ICTs, Telecoms, Internet and IT Industry advocacy has been highlighted by the Pakistani national mainstream electronic and print media; He has been serving as the Co Vice-Chair of ICANN's Asia Pacific Regional At Large Organization (APRALO), with an original tenure from 2010 through June, 2012; he was re-elected for a second two year term running through June, 2014. He is also involved with APRALO's umbrella organization, ICANN's ALAC.