The global body governing domain registrations, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), has appointed a new leadership team headed by newly elected Chair Cherine Chalaby.
Chalaby - the US-based chairman of Rasmala Investments - was first selected for the ICANN board in December 2010, elected as the Vice-Chair in 2015, and now succeeds Dr. Stephen Crocker, who served as ICANN chair since 2011. Dr Crocker has now retired from the board.
Chris Disspain has been elected vice-chair of ICANN after being selected by the country code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO).
The board also welcomed new Board members León Sanchez (LAC), Matthew Shears (EMEA), Avri Doria (NA), Sarah Deutsch (NA), and Manal Ismail (Egypt) as the Governmental Advisory Committee Liaison to the Board, replacing the outgoing Stephen Crocker, Rinalia Abdul Rahim, Asha Hemrajani, Markus Kummer and Thomas Schneider.
{loadposition peter}“I’m deeply honoured to be elected as the Board Chair,” said Chalaby. “The Board had enough confidence in ICANN’s maturity to elect me even though I do not come from the long and distinguished line of ‘Masters of the Internet Universe.’ I look forward to the future with great hope and enthusiasm, particularly to the partnership we will continue to build with the ICANN community.”
All new appointments were announced at the the 60th Public Meeting (ICANN60), held at Abu Dhabi in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries for the first time.
ICANN says data protection and privacy rules, particularly the European Union General Data Protection Regulation, were a hot topic during the meeting, with discussions across the community focused on gaining an understanding of the main concerns for various stakeholder groups and calls to action for ICANN org and Board.