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2015 ICANN Nominating Committee

Background | Timeline | Members | 360 Reviews | Committee Documents | Report Cards


September 2015

Updated - 29 September 2015
ICANN 2015 Nominating Committee Announces Selections

The ICANN 2015 Nominating Committee (NomCom) is pleased to announce its selections for nine leadership positions within ICANN. (See alphabetized list for each ICANN body below)

ICANN Board of Directors

Rafael Ibarra

Rafael Ibarra
Latin America/Caribbean Islands

George Sadowsky

George Sadowsky
North America

At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC)

Timothy Denton

Timothy Denton
North America

Kaili Kan

Kaili Kan
Asia/Australia/Pacific Islands

Leon Sanchez

Leon Sanchez
Latin America/Caribbean Islands

Council of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO)

Hsu Phen Valerie Tan

Hsu Phen Valerie Tan
Asia/Australia/Pacific Islands

Council of the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO)

Christelle Vaval

Christelle Vaval
Latin America/Caribbean Islands

Those selected will take up their positions after the end of ICANN's Annual General Meeting, which will take place during the ICANN Public Meeting scheduled for 18-22 October 2015 in Dublin, Ireland.

The NomCom is charged with recruiting and selecting a portion of ICANN's leadership. The NomCom is mandated to ensure that ICANN's overall leadership is diverse in geography, culture, skills, experience and perspective. The basic criteria is that selectees are people of integrity, objectivity, sound judgment, support decision-making within groups, work effectively in English, understand ICANN's mission and operation, are committed to its success, have experience in world affairs, contribute to cultural, professional and geographic expertise, and can work long and hard, generally as volunteers, for the global public trust.

An independent body at the community's service

Discussing the 2015 Nominating Committee results, Stephane Van Gelder, the Chair of the 2015 NomCom, shared the following:

"As Chair, it is my honor, pleasure and duty to report that the 2015 Nominating Committee has completed the task assigned to it by the ICANN Community and made the selections shown above.

By the close of the application period on 15 March 2015, the 2015 Nominating Committee had received 81 applications for the nine positions it was tasked with filling.

Once this work was completed, the 2015 Nominating Committee was then called upon to select a replacement for the position of North American ALAC representative, following the resignation of its previous selectee to that position and received nine applications for that position.

I want to thank the Nominating Committee members for working diligently through these two separate processes. It is rare that a NomCom gets called back to reselect for another position once its main slate for the cycle has been decided. This year's members had to withstand the added pressure of this late selection, whilst continuing to work as a group fully independent of ICANN's SOs, ACs and the Board. They rose to this challenge and completed their assigned tasks with aplomb and integrity.

Throughout the year, the Committee has reported on its processes through Report Cards, video updates and documents published on its webpage (https://www.icann.org/nomcom2015).

During this year's Annual General Meeting in Dublin in October, the Committee will present the ICANN Community with a Final Report detailing its work and providing in-depth data on the applications received."

Regional Breakdown

As noted above, the 2015 NomCom received 81 Statements of Interest from candidates all over the world (12 female and 69 male) during its open nomination period from 8 December 2014 to 15 March 2015.

The regional breakdown of this year's candidates is:

22 from Africa
10 from Asia/Australia/Pacific Islands
19 from Europe
22 from Latin America/Caribbean Islands
8 from North America

ALAC North America Region Selection Process

9 Candidates from Canada and the United State of America
1 female
8 male


NomCom 360 Reviews

Reference Material

Board and Community Recommendations to NomCom

Videos

  • Interview with ICANN's NomCom Leadership at ICANN 52 in Singapore (9 February 2015)

  • Interview with Stéphane Van Gelder, Chair, 2015 Nominating Committee (10 October 2014)
    HD Version


Application Period Closed – updated 12 August 2015

Apply Now for the At-Large Advisory Committee – ALAC

Opening for an ALAC Representative from the North American Region

27 July 2015

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' (ICANN) Nominating Committee (NomCom) was recently notified that the At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) North America region representative, appointed by ICANN's 2014 NomCom has resigned. The NomCom invites interested individuals from the North America region to apply to become an ALAC representative for the remainder of the current term, starting at the conclusion of the ICANN Annual General Meeting (AGM) in 2015 in Dublin in October, and ending at the ICANN AGM in 2016.

The ALAC is the ICANN body responsible for representing the voice of the end user in policy and operational discussions. For more information on the work of the ALAC see http://www.atlarge.icann.org/.

North American citizens who submitted applications in 2014, will be invited to update their applications and have them considered by the NomCom.

This position requires regular participation in teleconferences and may involve international travel, including travel to ICANN's three annual Public Meetings.

Fluency in English is a requirement for this position.

Applications – ALAC North America Region

All applications are confidential and should be received by 12 August 2015 (23:59 UTC) for full consideration. The selection will be announced in September 2015. The successful candidate will take up the position following ICANN's AGM in Dublin, Ireland in October 2015.


Candidate Application Period Closed

15 March 2015

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' (ICANN) Nominating Committee (NomCom) invites interested individuals to submit applications and/or to recommend candidates for ICANN's key leadership positions. 2015 applications are invited for the following positions:

  • Three members of the ICANN Board of Directors*
  • Two members of the Council of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO)
  • Three At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) representatives (one each from the Africa, Asia/Australia/Pacific Islands and Latin America/Caribbean Islands regions)
  • One member of the Council of the Country-Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO)

*Per Article VI, Section 5 of the ICANN Bylaws, ". . . at all times each Geographic Region shall have at least one Director, and at all times no region shall have more than five Directors on the Board (not including the President). As used in these Bylaws, each of the following is considered to be a 'Geographic Region': Europe; Asia/Australia/Pacific; Latin America/Caribbean islands; Africa; and North America." For additional information see Board Geographic Diversity section below.

Open Leadership Positions

Individuals selected by the NomCom will have a unique opportunity to work with accomplished colleagues from around the globe and help shape the Internet's technical coordination and policy development.

Those selected will also gain valuable insights and experience from working across boundaries of knowledge, responsibility, culture and geography. They will be making a valuable public service contribution towards the functioning and evolution of this essential global resource. Guided by the broad public interest, those selected will work to fulfill ICANN's mission to coordinate the global Internet's systems of unique identifiers, and in particular to ensure its stable and secure operation.

Fluency in English is a requirement for all positions.

These positions require regular participation in teleconferences and may involve significant international travel, including travel to ICANN's three annual Public Meetings. Recent ICANN Public Meetings were held in Singapore, London, and Los Angeles. Meetings during 2015 will be held in Singapore, Buenos Aires and Dublin.

Reasonable direct expenses incurred in the course of service will be reimbursed.

Each Board Member has the option to receive compensation in accordance with the resolution passed by the Board on 30 July 2014, but is not required to do so. (See https://www.icann.org/resources/board-material/resolutions-2014-07-30-en#2.b.)

Applications

All applications are confidential and should be received by 15 March 2015 (23:59 UTC) for full consideration. Selections will be announced in August or September 2015. Successful candidates will take up their positions following ICANN's Annual Meeting in October 2015.

Candidate Recommendations

Candidate recommendations are encouraged and can be submitted through an online form at http://nomcom.icann.org/suggest. If you have any questions or comments, please email: nomcom2015@icann.org.

Board Geographic Diversity

The graph below shows the current geographic diversity of ICANN's Board of Directors (not including ICANN's President and CEO):

2015 ICANN Board - Geographic Diversity, Oct 2014 - Oct 2015

Current NomCom-selected Board members include: Cherine Chalaby, Steve Crocker, Wolfgang Kleinwächter, Asha Hemrajani, Bruno Lanvin, Erika Mann, Gonzalo Navarro and George Sadowsky.

NomCom Timeline

2015 NomCom Timeline

Committee Outreach

Committee Documents

Members/Bios/Organizational Chart – (Group Photo)

Leadership Team: Stephane Van Gelder, Chair; Ron Andruff, Chair Elect; Cheryl Langdon-Orr, Associate Chair

Committee Members: Mehmet Akcin (RSSAC), Satish Babu (ALAC-AP), John Berryhill (Registrars Stakeholder Group), Alain Bidron (ISP Constituency), Don Blumenthal (Registries Stakeholder Group), Sarah B. Deutsch (CBUC-Large), Robert Guerra (SSAC), Sylvia Herlein Leite (ALAC-LAC), Han Petter Holen (ASO-AC), Louis Houle (ALAC-NA), Zahid Jamil (CBUC-Small), Juhani Juselius (ccNSO), Brenden Kuerbis (NCUC), Yrjo Lansipuro (ALAC-EU), John Levine (IAB for IETF), Fatimata Seye Sylla (ALAC-AF) and Ellen Shankman (Intellectual Property Constituency).

Nominating Committee Member Biographies

2015 NomCom Organizational Chart

Background:

The NomCom is an independent committee tasked with selecting eight members of the Board of Directors and other key positions within ICANN's structure.

It is designed to function independently from the ICANN Board, Supporting Organizations, and Advisory Committees. NomCom members act only on behalf of the interests of the global Internet community and within the scope of the ICANN mission and responsibilities assigned to it by the ICANN Bylaws.

NomCom members contribute understanding of the broad interests of the Internet community as a whole, and knowledge and experience of specific Internet constituencies who have appointed them.

The challenge for the NomCom is to integrate these perspectives and derive consensus in its selections. Although appointed by Supporting Organizations and other ICANN bodies, individual NomCom members are not accountable to their appointing bodies.

NomCom members are accountable for adherence to the ICANN Bylaws and for compliance with the rules and procedures established by the NomCom.

Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."