Skip to main content
Resources

ICANN 2021 Nominating Committee Delegates

This page contains biographical information about each Nominating Committee delegate.

Committee Delegates

The 2021 Nominating Committee delegates are:

  • Ole Jacobsen (Chair)
  • Tracy Hackshaw (Chair-Elect)
  • Jay Sudowski (Associate Chair)
  • Sébastien Bachollet (ALAC-EUR)
  • Pankaj Chaturvedi (ASO)
  • Amrita Choudhury (ALAC–AP)
  • Paul Diaz (GNSO–RySG)
  • Hadia Elminiawi (ALAC–AF)
  • Michael Graham (GNSO–IPC)
  • Robert Guerra (SSAC)
  • Juhani Juselius (ccNSO)
  • Wolfgang Kleinwächter (GNSO–NCUC)
  • Peter Koch (IETF)
  • Marie-Noémie Marques (GNSO–ISPCP)
  • Scott McCormick (GNSO–CBUC)
  • Glenn McKnight (ALAC–NA)
  • Amir Qayyum (RSSAC)
  • Tobias Sattler (GNSO–RrSG)
  • Vanda Scartezini (ALAC–LAC)
  • Adetola Sogbesan (GNSO–CBUC)

2021 NomCom Leadership Team

Ole Jacobsen – Chair

Ole Jacobsen

Ole J. Jacobsen is the Editor and Publisher of The Internet Protocol Journal, a quarterly publication on all aspects of Internet technology. He has been active in the computer networking field since 1976 when he went to work for the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, an early ARPANET site. Ole was with Interop Company (now part of UBM Tech) from shortly after its formation in 1987 until 1998. He was the Editor and Publisher of ConneXions--The Interoperability Report, a monthly technical journal in the field of computer communications, published by Interop Company.

Jacobsen holds a bachelor's in electrical engineering and computing science from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom.

He serves on the board of the Asia Pacific Network Operators Group (APNOG), which hosts the annual APRICOT conference, and has served as chair of the Meetings Committee for the IETF Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC). Ole has also served on several ICANN and IETF nomination committees. In his spare time, Ole organizes pipe organ concerts and demonstration events.

Tracy Hackshaw – Chair-Elect

Tracy Hackshaw

Tracy Hackshaw is an Information and Communications Technology and Digital Economy Strategist with 25 years of local, regional, and international experience spanning work in the public and private sectors where he has been integrally involved in the design and implementation of several globally recognized award-winning initiatives such as SurePay, ttconnect, TTBizLink, and Star.tt. Tracy has represented Trinidad & Tobago in various international forums, including at the 2016 G77 Meeting of Experts on ICTs and Sustainable Development for South-South Cooperation, the Executive Management Committee of the Commonwealth Cybercrime Initiative, a two-year term as vice chair of ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), and co-chaired the Dynamic Coalition on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Internet Economy at the United Nations Internet Governance Forum.

Following his two year term as GAC vice chair, Tracy was asked to co-chair the GAC Under-served Regions Working Group focusing on capacity building within developing and emerging economies primarily in the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific regions, and to take the lead on the GAC Technology Task Force, charged with the redevelopment and redeployment of the GAC's website on a new ICANN web platform. He also responded to the call to participate as a Community Mentor in ICANN's Pilot Community Onboarding Program, a role which he performed from ICANN55 through to ICANN59. In 2018, he was selected to serve as the Latin American and Caribbean Regional At-Large delegate to the 2019 ICANN Nominating Committee and served a second term on the 2020 ICANN Nominating Committee. In September 2020 he was selected by the ICANN Board to serve as chair-elect of the 2021 ICANN Nominating Committee.

As director of the Trinidad & Tobago Multistakeholder Advisory Group, he played an integral role in convening the inaugural Trinidad & Tobago Internet Governance Forum in January 2017 and has continued in this role right through to the most recent TTIGF held in January 2020. Tracy is the founding vice chair of the Internet Society Trinidad & Tobago Chapter and was elected chair for the 2017-19 term.

In 2018, and following his second year (2016-17) serving as Internet Society expert moderator and coach and mentor to ISOC's Youth@IGF, Tracy was asked to serve on the Board of the Digital Grassroots Youth Initiative.

In addition to professional leadership roles in the Ministries of Science & Technology, Public Administration, Planning & Development, and iGovTT, Tracy has conducted teaching and research at the DiploFoundation/University of Malta, where he is currently a member of their teaching and research faculty as well as at The University of the West Indies, where he received a First Class Honours degree in sociology & psychology in 1996. Since graduation, Tracy has continued his postgraduate learning path at Royal Holloway College, University of London and the National University of Singapore (e-Government Leadership Centre, Institute of Systems Science). After completing further studies in entrepreneurship and small & medium enterprise management at the Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business, he received a master's with distinction in 2019.

Jay Sudowski – Associate Chair

Jay Sudowski

Jay Sudowski has been involved in the Internet Infrastructure industry since the late 1990s. He is the CEO of Handy Networks, a data center and managed services company based in Denver, Colorado, he founded in the early 2000s.

Additionally, Jay has two other small businesses, one in the technology industry and one in the food services industry. He also serves on the board of the Adoption Exchange and the i2Coalition. Jay has been involved in the Internet governance world since 2013.

 

Nominating Committee Delegates

(listed in alphabetical order by family name)

Sébastien Bachollet – ALAC Europe Region

Paul Diaz

Sébastien Bachollet has been deeply involved in the Internet world since 1994. At SNCF, the French National Railway Company, he launched the www.sncf.fr website, the largest e-business website in France today. From 2000–2004, Sébastien was Deputy General Manager of CIGREF (Club Informatique des Grandes Entreprises Françaises). He has represented CIGREF and business users in the Internet governance field at all levels. From 2004-2010, he was the founding CEO of BBS International Consulting, an information systems consulting firm with an emphasis on Internet technologies.

Sébastien has been an active member of the ICANN community since 2001. He has served on the ICANN Board of Directors and the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC), chaired the Multistakeholder Meeting Strategy Working Group, contributed to numerous working groups and committees, and is currently the Chair of the European At-Large Organization (EURALO).

He worked actively to launch the European Global Event on Domain Names and Address Systems, known as EGENI Europe, held in Paris from 2002 to 2008, and led the local team organizing ICANN32 meeting in Paris in conjunction with the ICANN meeting.

ICANN Involvement

Sébastien successfully led the local team for the organization of the ICANN meeting in Paris in June 2008 ( http://par.icann.org/fr ) which was attended by 1700 participants. He suggested the At-Large Summit concept during the Lisbon ICANN28 meeting in March 2007. The first At-Large Summit (ATLAS I) took place at ICANN34 in Mexico City, Mexico.

Sébastien is a French citizen and resides in Burgundy. He is married with 3 children.

Pankaj Chaturvedi – Address Supporting Organization

Pankaj Chaturvedi

Pankaj Chaturvedi has over 30 years of experience heading different roles in technology and business as part of his various assignments. Currently he works at Lightstorm Telecom, an independent carrier Neutral Telecom Infrastructure Company in India. He was the treasurer at the Internet Service Providers Association of India. He is part of the Organization Committee of the Indian Network Operators Group (INNOG). He has served as secretary of the Internet Society (ISOC) Delhi Chapter and is an active participant in meetings held by the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the South Asian Network Operators Group (SANOG), and the Indian Network Operators Group (INNOG).

Pankaj has been actively associated with the Internet Service Provider (ISP) community for two decades. He works closely with licensors and regulators in India and works towards resolving the issues of the ISP community based on discussion and consensus.

Pankaj started his career with Uptron India Limited, where he was managing mainframe installations of government clients. He worked with Blue Start Limited, where he was responsible for datacom equipment sales and support, which included datacryptors, modems, and host security modules. He joined the ISP industry in 2000 when he joined Primus Telecommunications, an enterprise wireless ISP. In 2005, he joined Dishnet Wireless Ltd., where he was responsible for the enterprise and wholesale voice business. He worked at Dishnet for 15 years.

Pankaj holds a Bachelor of Technology degree in electronics and communication engineering from Guru Nanak Dev University. Linkedin: Pankaj Chaturvedi

Amrita Choudhury – ALAC Asia/Australia/Pacific Region

Amrita Choudhury

Amrita Choudhury is the Director of the CCAOI, an organization representing the interests of Internet users and non-users in India. She is an active participant in technology policy discussions, both at the domestic and international level and is involved in capacity building, outreach, and research in Internet governance.

She serves as the president of Internet Society Delhi Chapter, member of United Nations Multistakeholder Advisory Group (UN IGF MAG), vice chair of the Asia Pacific Regional IGF (AprIGF), and heads the Asia Pacific Women Special Internet Group at the Internet Society.

Amrita is one of the founding members of the India School of Internet Governance (inSIG) and curates for the Geneva Internet Platform. She advises and guides Youth@IGF, a youth outreach initiative in India, and the Rural SIG at Internet Society. You can find her on LinkedIn here.

Paul Diaz – Registries Stakeholder Group

Paul Diaz

Paul Diaz is the Vice President of Policy at Public Interest Registry (PIR), the .ORG registry operator.

Paul brings over two decades of policy development and analysis experience to PIR. He has participated in numerous policy development processes (PDPs) and served as chair of the first Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy Working Group and on the cross-community Meeting Strategies Working Group. In addition, Paul has served in leadership roles in the gTLD Registries Stakeholder Group (RySG), including as chair from 2015-2018.

Prior to joining PIR, Paul spent over 12 years as Senior Policy Manager for Network Solutions, where he led policy development and compliance initiatives that impacted the company's corporate objectives as they related to new top-level domains (TLDs), ICANN consensus policies, and industry regulations. During his tenure, Paul was also instrumental in acting as the company's voice of governmental advocacy through presenting various issues to U.S. Congress and Executive branch agencies.

A graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Paul is an avid traveler and has visited over 50 countries to date. He lives in northern Virginia with his wife and three children.

Hadia Elminiawi – ALAC Africa Region

Hadia Elminiawi

Hadia Elminiawi is the Chief Expert at the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of Egypt (NTRA), leading the DNS–Entrepreneurship Center (DNS-EC) founded by NTRA and ICANN to foster the domain name industry in Africa and the Middle East. Hadia has spent most of her career in Internet development leadership roles. In 1995, Hadia joined the Egyptian Universities Network, Egypt's Internet gateway at the time and Egypt's top-level domain. During her tenure at the Egyptian Universities Network, Hadia played a major role in helping academic sites design and implement their own networks and connect to the Internet. Hadia worked on the implementation of enhancements to existing systems and helped in developing and setting the .eg registry policies as well as developing users' documentation and training material. Throughout her 14 years at the Egyptian Universities Network, Hadia has taken many roles and responsibilities, such as technical operations manager for .eg registry, IPv6 project manager, and foreign relations manager. In 2014, Hadia joined the National Hungarian Trading House in Budapest as deputy to the director of the Arab Countries Department and later as acting director.

From 2017 until 2019, Hadia served as a member of the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC), representing the interests of Internet users in Africa. She is involved in many ICANN policy development activities and a member of several ICANN working groups. She is a member of the Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) on the Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data Team representing the interests of end users. Hadia is also interested in Internet governance. She proposed and organized a session at the Africa IGF in 2017 and has been a panelist and speaker at several ICANN events.

Hadia holds a master's degree in management and leadership from Szent Istvan University in Hungary, a diploma in engineering management, and a bachelor's in electronics and communication engineering from the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University.

Michael Graham – Intellectual Property Constituency

Michael Graham

Michael is Senior Corporate Counsel and Global Director of Intellectual Property with Expedia, Inc. He has over 28 years of experience in trademark, copyright, Internet, and related intellectual property (IP) law. Michael joined Expedia in 2014 after 21 years as a partner at Chicago IP law firm Marshall, Gerstein & Borun, LLP, where he established one of the earliest Internet IP legal practices. He previously practiced at Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione, was the founder of Gnosis IP Law, and served as co-director of DePaul University College of Law's Technology & Intellectual Property Clinic. He is an active member of the International Trademark Association (INTA), a past member of INTA's Board of Directors, and currently Chair of the Programming Advisory Council.

Michael's legal practice has included a broad range of cyberlaw issues since 1995, including work on the Memorandum of Understanding regarding domain name disputes, as well as copyright and trademark matters. He has participated actively in ICANN since 2012 as a member of the Intellectual Property Constituency of the GNSO, and has been a member of several working groups and PDPs. He contributed to the Consumer Trust, Consumer Choice, and Competition Working Group and the Implementation Advisory Group for the CCT Working Group that developed metrics and directed the research efforts necessary to support the CCT Review Team. Michael also served as vice chair of the Policy and Implementation Non-PDP Working Group that developed definitions and policies to guide its work and future ICANN policy and implementation development, including the expedited PDP and implementation review processes. He is presently a member of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs PDP. Michael is also a musician, national ski patroller, and music festival volunteer with a passion for travel, the outdoors, and family.

Robert Guerra – SSAC

Robert Guerra

Robert Guerra is a civil society expert specializing in issues of Internet governance, cyber security, multistakeholder participation, Internet freedom, and human rights. Robert is the founder of Privaterra, a Canada-based company that works with private industry and nongovernmental organizations to assist them with issues of information security and Internet governance.

Robert serves as a member of ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) and the Multistakeholder Ethos award panel. Additionally, he has participated as a member of the official Canadian delegation at two UN World Summits on the Information Society (WSIS).

Robert has given numerous media interviews and often is invited to share his views on the challenges being faced by social justice organizations in regards to surveillance, censorship, and privacy. He has advised and/or collaborated with numerous nonprofits, foundations, governments, and international organizations, such as Counterpart International, American University's Institute on Disability and Public Policy (IDPP), Citizen Lab, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR). Robert is an Honours graduate of the University of Western Ontario and an alumnus of the Universidad de Navarra's Faculty of Medicine.

Juhani Juselius– ccNSO

Juhani Juselius

Juselius holds a master's of science degree in engineering and he has been working for the ICT sector since 1995.

Juselius has been registry manager for the .FI ccTLD since 2004. As a hobby, he was a launching partner of a new gTLD registry at the peak of new gTLD boom.

Juselius has been elected into several board and other high-level positions in the leading associations of the ICT industry including ICANN ccNSO Council, NomCom, CENTR Board, and TIVIA (Finland). At the moment, he is the chair of the Internet Society's Finland chapter.

When relaxing, Juselius prefers kayaking or hiking in the wilderness.

Wolfgang Kleinwächter – Noncommercial Users Constituency

Wolfgang Kleinwächter

Wolfgang Kleinwächter is a Professor Emeritus from the University of Aarhus in Denmark where he has taught a graduate course on Internet policy and regulation since 1998. He is also a commissioner in the Global Commission on Stability in Cyberspace (GCSC).

Wolfgang has been involved in Internet governance issues since the early 1990s. He was a member of the United Nations Working Group on Internet Governance (2003-2005), appointed by then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, special adviser to the chair of the Internet Governance Forum (2005-2010), Nitin Desai, and special ambassador of the Net Mundial Initiative (NMI).

He has been involved in ICANN since 1998. He was a member of the ICANN Board of Directors from 2013-2015, has chaired the Nominating Committee (NomCom), and represented the Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC) in the GNSO Council from 2011-2013. In 2018, he served on the third Accountability and Transparency Review (ATRT3) Team.

In the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) process, Wolfgang was a member of the WSIS Civil Society Bureau, co-chair of the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus, and a member of the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development IGF Improvement Working Group. He is a co-founder of the European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EURODIG), the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GIGANET), and the ICANN Studienkreis (Study Group). He has served on numerous committees and contributed as chair, rapporteur, and panelist to numerous intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, such as the UN, UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development, United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Telecommunications Union, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Economic Forum, Munich Security Conference, and others.

In 2009, the Council of Europe (COE) appointed him to chair the Cross-Border Internet Expert Group, which drafted the Declaration on Universal Principles in Internet Governance, adopted by the COE Ministerial Meeting in 2011. In the EU, he chaired the Coordination Committee of the European Interregional Information Society Initiative (IRIS) from 1994-1998, the Internet Governance Subgroup of the EU Task Force on the Internet of Things (IOT) from 2010-2012, and was on the evaluation team of the EU's Safer Internet Action Program (SIAP) from 2005-2007. From 2007 to 2012, he was a member of the Steering Board of the EU-FP7 research project titled Next Generation Internet/EURO-NF.

He received his Dr. rer. pol. and Dr. habil. from the University of Leipzig, where he taught until 1992 at the Institute for International Studies. Before moving to the University of Aarhus, he taught at the University of Tampere, Finland; the University of Oerebro, Sweden; and the School of International Services (SIS) at American University in Washington, D.C. In the academic world, Wolfgang served from 1988 to 2012 as a voting member of the International Council of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), where he chaired the IAMCR Law Section for more than ten years. He is the founder and chair of the European Summer School on Internet Governance (EURO-SSIG), is a member of various editorial boards of academic journals, has testified in hearings in the Deutsche Bundestag and the European Parliament, and has published and edited more than 200 articles and 12 books. One of his latest publications, co-authored by Vint Cerf and William Drake, was "Internet Fragmentation: An Overview," published by the World Economic Forum in 2017. He also published "Towards a Global Framework for Cyberpeace and Digital Cooperation: An Agenda for 2020" with a preface from UN Secretary General António Guterres, for the IGF in Berlin in November 2019. His Internet Governance blog is on Circle ID. In 2012, he received the Internet Award from the German Internet Economy Association (eco).

Peter Koch – IAB for IETF

Peter Koch

Peter Koch is DENIC's Senior Policy Advisor, interfacing between technology, policy, and regulation. He has 25 years of experience on the Internet and in the Domain Name System world. Peter has long been an active participant in international bodies like RIPE, OARC, CENTR, IETF, ISOC, and ICANN and also represents DENIC in various national forums.

He currently focuses on Internet governance, security, and regulation of infrastructure, with special attention to the development and protection of the Internet's identifier system.

Peter Koch serves as Chairman of the Board of ISOC.DE e.V., the German chapter of the Internet Society.

Marie-Noémie Marques – ISPCP Constituency

Marie-Noémie Marques

Marie-Noémie is currently responsible for issues concerning Internet governance at the Orange Group. She has been participating in the Internet Governance Forum and ICANN meetings since 2016 and is a member of the Internet Service Providers and Connectivity Providers (ISPCP) Constituency. Marie-Noémie has also contributed work to the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability CCWG Diversity Subgroup. She is in charge of follow-up trade negotiations regarding telecommunications and corresponding regulatory issues, with a particular focus on the digital economy and its challenges.

Marie-Noémie has over twenty-five years of experience working on telecommunications and regulation. She has been involved in the development and advancement of a number of policies related to the electronic communications' framework at Wanadoo, France Telecom, and Orange group. She has a diploma in technical sciences of information and communication, a master's degree in Spanish, and a PhD in history of international relations from La Sorbonne University, Paris.

Scott McCormick – Commercial and Business Users Constituency (Large)

Scott McCormick

Scott McCormick is Chief Information Security Officer at Reciprocity. He has 20 years of experience in information security and governance, risk, and compliance. Scott also serves as an advisor to security-focused startups. Prior to Reciprocity, Scott led security compliance at HackerOne. He has also held security positions at RSA Security, KEYW Corporation, and Booz Allen Hamilton. Prior to his private sector career, Scott worked in the U.S. Intelligence Community and served in the U.S. Air Force.

 

 

Glenn McKnight – ALAC North America Region

Glenn McKnight

Glenn's Internet governance experience includes being the co-founder and project coordinator at the North American School of Governance. He is the creator of the online course Introduction to Internet Governance and the curator of the Internet Governance Hub blog, as well as co-administrator for the Internet Governance Hub on Facebook.

Glenn has been involved with ICANN since 2009. He has held various positions, including as former NomCom, North American Regional At-Large Organization (NARALO) Chair, NARALO Secretariat, and as an ALAC member. In addition, he is the co-founder of ISOC Canada and currently sits on the ISOC Board of Trustees. He was the 2018 ISOC NomCom Chair.

Glenn lives in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, and is active in Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Humanitarian Activities and the Canadian Victory Garden.

Amir Qayyum – RSSAC

Amir Qayyum

Amir Qayyum is a professor and the dean of the Quality Enhancement Cell (QEC) at Capital University of Science and Technology (CUST), Islamabad, Pakistan. He received his PhD in mobile wireless networks from the University of Paris-Sud, France. Since 1997, he has been actively involved with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and is the co-author of a Request for Comments (RFC) on Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). He has been involved with ICANN since 2012, initially as an ICANN Fellow, then as the At-Large Structure (ALS) Coordinator. Amir served as a member of the ICANN Nominating Committee from 2014-2017, representing APRALO-ALAC. He is a member of the Root Server System Advisory Committee (RSSAC) Caucus and has served as a member of the Fellowship Selection Committee since 2018. Dr. Qayyum is also the chair of the Board of Directors of the ISOC Islamabad chapter (2014-2019) and is one of the founding members. He is on the Member Board of Directors of the Pakistan Internet Exchange (PKIX). He has been actively involved with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) activities since 2004, and is currently serving as the chair, IEEE Islamabad Section (2017-2020). He has also served as the chair of Professional Activities (2014-2016), the chair of the IEEE Computer Society Islamabad chapter (2009-2014), and as the secretary and treasurer of the section (2011-2013).

He is the founding director of the Center of Research in Networks and Telecom (CoReNeT) and is the project director of many national and international funded research and development projects in the domain of wired and wireless networks. He is a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Pak France Alumni Network (PFAN).

He is also a philanthropist and actively involved in community service and social work. Amir is the chair of the Board of Trustees of Rifah Trust focused on education, health care and community service, a member of the Board of Trustees of Ehsas Trust for education, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Meethi Zindagi Foundation working for health care of diabetic patients.

Tobias Sattler – Registrars Stakeholder Group

Tobias Sattler

Tobias Sattler is Board Member and Chief Technology Officer at united-domains AG. He served as vice chair and CTO to the Registrar Stakeholder Group for four years.

Tobias is an active member of the domain name industry:

Furthermore, Tobias is an author of IETF Internet-Drafts and articles on CircleID, Medium, and LinkedIn Pulse.

He is a supporting member of Amnesty International, the German Cancer Aid, Caritas, the German Red Cross, World Wildlife Fund, and UNICEF. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his family, reading, walking, and learning.

Vanda Scartezini – ALAC Latin America & Caribbean Region

Vanda Scartezini

Vanda was educated as an electronic engineer specializing in research and development management. She is board member certificated, both in management and innovation. Her career spans more than 40 years in management positions in the information and communications (ICT) sector in both the public and private sectors.

She has advised, helped write, and implement many core pieces of legislation across Brazilian commercial life, from integrated circuits, information technology, software, copyright, patent, and agricultural varieties laws. She owns two consulting companies dealing with ICT and data protection law as well as serving as the intellectual property and technology director for RASTRO, the authority manager of a cargo company's data platform. She is also vice chair of a local IT womens association called Nexti and a director of DNS Women, an international group for womens' empowerment in the DNS industry. She also teaches an MBA course on IT Sustainability at the Polytechnic School –University of Sao Paulo.

Vanda has had an illustrious public service career, serving twice as Brazilian National Secretary for Technology and National Secretary for Information Technology Policy, President of the Brazilian Patent Office (INPI), and as advisor to the Economic Development Secretariat for the São Paulo State Government. She has represented Brazil in international forums including the World Intellectual Property Organization, the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, MERCOSUR, various Free Trade Area of the Americas negotiations and regional agreements. She also led a World Bank project on e-waste and e-commerce for small business in MERCOSUR.

In the private sector, Vanda has served as superintendent at Sid Microelectronic and as General Manager at Vertice Design House for 10 years. She has coordinated a group of companies to promote Brazilian agrisoftware and advised law offices and environmental companies on ITC issues. She has helped various ICT companies to set up their manufacturing plants in Brazil and local small and medium enterprises absorb transferred technologies.

Adetola Sogbesan – Commercial and Business Users Constituency (Small)

Adetola Sogbesan

Tola Sogbesan has been in information and communications technology, digital economy strategy, and management consulting for about 25 years with local, regional, and international experience. He consults for start-ups, not-for-profits, and public organizations and serves on the board of small businesses and not-for-profit organizations.

Previously, Tola worked with the telecommunication unit of the Siemens Group as an enterprise network sales engineer. He has gone on to found and lead three small businesses in the technology, management consulting, and education sectors.

He is a Master of Science in information systems management from the University of Liverpool and recently began PhD research in cybersecurity and digital leadership.

Tola has been involved in the Internet governance space since 2014 and is a proud ICANN Fellow with multiple Fellowship coaching experiences.

In 2018, he was appointed to serve on the third Accountability and Transparency Review (ATRT3) Team.

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."