ICANN Announcements

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ICANN Announces New Vice President - Policy Development

17 May 2006

ICANN is pleased to announce today that Denise Michel has been appointed as Vice President - Policy Development after an intensive recruitment process from a strong candidate list both internally and externally. Denise has been appointed by an official candidate panel which included the Chairs of two supporting organisations. Denise has been contributing her expertise and leadership to ICANN for over five years as a consultant and as Executive Director, At-Large. In her new position, Denise will oversee ICANN's bottom-up, consensus-based policy process, including promoting the development and assessment of policy to coordinate the management of the technical elements of the Domain Name System, managing support for ICANN stakeholders' policy-related efforts, and encouraging diverse and international participation in ICANN's policy process. Denise will be based in Brussels.

Before her work with ICANN, she founded and led a successful technology company that provided Internet-based merchandising and operational inventory systems, which she sold in 2000. Prior to starting this company, she was appointed by U.S. President Clinton as the Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. During her tenure there she had broad responsibilities for creating and implementing that country's first comprehensive Internet initiative. Prior to her administration service, Denise built a technology policy division for an alliance of 3000+ U.S. high-tech companies, managed policy and communications for a variety of international initiatives at the National Science Foundation, and was responsible for numerous policy projects while working in the U.S. Senate.