Biography
Veni Markovski is the head of Government and Intergovernmental Organization Engagement for ICANN. Based in New York, he is the vice-president, responsible for the relations of ICANN with the United Nations, the UN Agencies, and the Permanent Missions to the United Nations.
In September 1990 he started his work on the Internet, as a system operator of the first Sofia-based bulletin-board system, part of FidoNet.
In 1993 Markovski co-founded and for nine years was the CEO of bol.bg - the first commercial Internet service provider in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. The company was sold successfully in 2008 to an international investment fund.
In 1995 he co-founded the Bulgarian Internet Society, a non-profit, of which he serves as President and chairman of the Board.
In March 2002 Markovski was appointed as Chairman of the Bulgarian President's IT Advisory Council, a position he held until the President stepped down from office at the end of his second term on January 22, 2012.
In 2005 he was invited to be the senior international projects adviser to the chairman of the governmental Agency for Information Technologies and communications, a position that he held until 2009. He was also adviser to the Bulgarian national cybersecurity coordinator from 2009 till 2013.
Since the beginning of his career, Veni Markovski has been involved in different international organizations and programs on different levels - as project manager, adviser, senior adviser, advocate for policy changes, mediator, board member, etc. He has served on the Boards of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, the global Internet Society, ICANN, among others. He was a member of two experts group to the European Commission – the High-Level Expert Group on Fake News and Online Disinformation and the Expert Group on Tackling Disinformation and Promoting Digital Literacy Through Education and Training.
Markovski has graduated the Law School of St. Kliment Ohridski Sofia University.
He has published hundreds of articles in the mainstream and specialized media, and is the author of one book, “Caught in the Net”, published by Sofia University Press in 2018.