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Chair’s Blog: Preview of the May Board Workshop

29 April 2026
By
Tripti Sinha

Tripti Sinha

ICANN Board Chair

Tripti Sinha is the President and CEO of Internet2, where she champions the organization’s core mission of enabling U.S. higher education and research institutions to collaborate on mission-critical technology services and emerging technologies. Internet2 also works with global National Research and Education Networks (NRENs). Sinha has over three decades of progressive experience in Internet and Cyber-Infrastructure technologies. Her experience spans leadership roles in engineering, operations, finance, governance, advocacy, and policy.

Before joining Internet2, Tripti held two leadership roles at the University of Maryland: Assistant Vice President and Chief Technology Officer and Executive Director of the Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX), a regional research and education network. In these roles, she supported advanced, high-performance networking and research technologies, including GPU compute infrastructure optimized for AI workloads and investigating evolving quantum networking technologies.

She has served on many non-profit and private sector technology advisory boards, and was past Chair of The Quilt’s Board of Directors and former Co-Chair of ICANN’s Root Server System Advisory Committee.

Tripti has a Computer Science degree from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and did graduate work in Computer Science at the University of Maryland. She holds executive education certificates from Harvard Kennedy School in Public Leadership and Policy, and in Global Innovation and Execution from Stanford University. She was born in India and lives in the United States. As a child and young adult, Tripti moved back-and-forth between the U.S. and India which gave her an appreciation for global pluralism. She is proficient in English and Hindi, and understands Punjabi, Urdu and the ancient Sanskrit language. Sinha has a keen interest in Information and Communication Technology innovation, entrepreneurship, governance and policy, and international affairs.

Tripti was nominated to serve on the ICANN Board of Directors by the Nominating Committee in 2018. Her term will expire at the Annual General Meeting 2027.

As representatives from ICANN-accredited registrars and generic top-level domain (gTLD) registries gather this week for the Contracted Parties Summit in Manchester, United Kingdom, the Board is preparing for its next workshop. The three-day workshop will take place in Manchester 1–3 May, following the summit.

The first day of the workshop will include a 90-minute informational session on the domain name industry. The chairs of the Registrars Stakeholder Group and the Registries Stakeholder Group will present the key trends, operational challenges, and emerging opportunities that are shaping the domain ecosystem, along with considerations for maintaining a stable and secure Domain Name System.

This session will be open to the public as a Zoom webinar, and anyone interested in the domain name industry is invited to attend.

Contracted Parties' Perspective on the Domain Name Industry: Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities
Friday, 1 May 2026 | 9:15–10:45 British Summer Time (8:15–9:45 UTC)

Here is an overview of the other topics the Board will address at the May Board Workshop:

2026 Round: The next application window for the New gTLD Program will open on 30 April 2026, and the Board will receive a debrief on the program launch. In addition, we will preview ICANN's readiness for the application processing phase and receive an update on the status of application processing for the Applicant Support Program and the Registry Service Provider Evaluation Program.

RSS Governance: The Board will review the Root Server System (RSS) Governance Working Group's proposed functional model of RSS governance, which the working group delivered in February. This will help the Board prepare for its consideration of these outputs in the context of existing advice from the Root Server System Advisory Committee.

GNSO Transfer Policy: The Board will receive an overview and analysis of the Generic Names Supporting Organization's (GNSO) Transfer Policy recommendations. The recommendations relate to proposed rules for registrars to follow when transferring domains across registrars or registrants.

Operating and Financial Plans: The Board will consider adopting the revised one-year and five-year Operating and Financial Plans for the fiscal year that starts on 1 July 2026. As a result of the Public Comment submissions, ICANN made text updates to increase clarity to the ICANN Fiscal Year 2027 (FY27) Operating Plan and the FY27–31 Operating and Financial Plan. Also, after reassessing the funding forecast, ICANN made a positive adjustment to the FY27 funding, but no changes were made to the expenses.

A summary of the community's feedback and the updated versions of the ICANN FY27–31 Operating and Financial Plan, ICANN FY27 Operating Plan, ICANN FY27 Budget, and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority FY27 Operating Plan and Budget are available on the Public Comment proceeding webpage.

Reviews: The Review of Reviews Cross Community Group (Reviews CCG) is developing a proposal for the future of ICANN reviews and has requested feedback from its nominating groups on a refined review outline to inform its draft report. Building on the conversations during ICANN85, and taking into account the subsequent refinements to the proposal, the Board will discuss the outline and consider feedback to submit to the Reviews CCG.

The workshop will conclude with a Regular Board Meeting on 3 May, and the agenda and any resulting approved resolutions will be available on the Board Activities and Meetings page. After the workshop, I will share an overview of the key outcomes. I wish everyone who attended the Contracted Parties Summit safe travels!

Authors

Tripti Sinha

Tripti Sinha

ICANN Board Chair
Tripti Sinha

Tripti Sinha

ICANN Board Chair

Tripti Sinha is the President and CEO of Internet2, where she champions the organization’s core mission of enabling U.S. higher education and research institutions to collaborate on mission-critical technology services and emerging technologies. Internet2 also works with global National Research and Education Networks (NRENs). Sinha has over three decades of progressive experience in Internet and Cyber-Infrastructure technologies. Her experience spans leadership roles in engineering, operations, finance, governance, advocacy, and policy.

Before joining Internet2, Tripti held two leadership roles at the University of Maryland: Assistant Vice President and Chief Technology Officer and Executive Director of the Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX), a regional research and education network. In these roles, she supported advanced, high-performance networking and research technologies, including GPU compute infrastructure optimized for AI workloads and investigating evolving quantum networking technologies.

She has served on many non-profit and private sector technology advisory boards, and was past Chair of The Quilt’s Board of Directors and former Co-Chair of ICANN’s Root Server System Advisory Committee.

Tripti has a Computer Science degree from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and did graduate work in Computer Science at the University of Maryland. She holds executive education certificates from Harvard Kennedy School in Public Leadership and Policy, and in Global Innovation and Execution from Stanford University. She was born in India and lives in the United States. As a child and young adult, Tripti moved back-and-forth between the U.S. and India which gave her an appreciation for global pluralism. She is proficient in English and Hindi, and understands Punjabi, Urdu and the ancient Sanskrit language. Sinha has a keen interest in Information and Communication Technology innovation, entrepreneurship, governance and policy, and international affairs.

Tripti was nominated to serve on the ICANN Board of Directors by the Nominating Committee in 2018. Her term will expire at the Annual General Meeting 2027.

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