Skip to main content
Resources

2022 ICANN Nominating Committee Delegates

This page contains biographical information about each Nominating Committee delegate.

Committee Delegates

The 2022 Nominating Committee delegates are:

2022 NomCom Leadership Team

Michael Graham – Chair

Photo of Michael Graham

Michael Graham is Senior Corporate Counsel and Global Director of Intellectual Property with Expedia, Inc. He has over 35 years of experience in trademark, copyright, Internet, and related intellectual property (IP) law. Michael joined Expedia in 2014 after many years representing a broad range of clients as a partner at the 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 Vice Chair of the Internet Committee.

Graham'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 clearance, registration, and protection matters. He has participated actively in ICANN since 2012 as a member of the Intellectual Property Constituency of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) and has been a member of several working groups and policy development processes (PDPs). He contributed to the Competition, Consumer Trust, and Consumer Choice (CCT) Review 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. Graham has 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. Previously, he served as the NomCom representative from the Intellectual Property Constituency from 2019 to 2021 and is presently a member of the Review of All Rights Protection Mechanisms in All gTLDs PDP. Graham is also a musician, national ski patroller, and music festival volunteer with a passion for travel, the outdoors, and family.

Damon Ashcraft – Chair-Elect

Photo of Damon Ashcraft

Damon Ashcraft is the current Chair-Elect of ICANN's Nominating Committee (NomCom). He has been an active volunteer within ICANN since 2015, when he joined the NomCom in 2015 as a representative from the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC). He was appointed by the ICANN Board as Chair-Elect of the NomCom for 2018 and as Chair for the 2019 NomCom. His primary objectives as Chair include increasing communications from the NomCom to the ICANN community and providing more transparency within the NomCom.

Ashcraft has experience with and has sat on the boards of various nonprofit organizations, including his current role as Vice President of the Arizona Bar Foundation in Phoenix, USA. The Bar Foundation administers funds for various legal organizations within the state of Arizona that provide free or reduced cost legal services to the indigent. He has served on and continues to serve on boards for his church, an affiliate of Habitat for Humanity, and homeowners' associations.

Professionally, he is a partner with the law firm of Snell and Wilmer, LLP, in Phoenix, USA where he is a member of the firm's intellectual property practice group. His legal practice involves the representation of intellectual property owners in the procurement, enforcement, and monetization of intellectual property. He represents clients in transactions including mergers and acquisitions and liquidity events.

Ole Jacobsen – Associate Chair

Photo of 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.

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

Nominating Committee Delegates

(Listed in alphabetical order by family name)

Taiwo Peter Akinremi – Noncommercial Users Constituency

Photo of Taiwo Peter Akinremi

Taiwo Peter Akinremi has been involved in Internet governance space since 2013 and worked information and communication technology consulting, risk, compliance, data protection, and privacy for about 10 years. Akinremi is currently the Operations and IT Manager with Data Analytics Privacy Technology Ltd, a leading consulting and data protection compliance organization in Nigeria. He oversees a team of specialists to provide advisory, data protection impact assessment, IT infrastructure assessment, and bespoke training to sectors including financial, technology, and health.

Akinremi is an active ICANN participant and member of the Noncommercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG) and the Noncommercial Users Constituency (NCUC). He is one of the NCUC appointees to the  NCSG Policy Committee and serves on the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Standing Selection Committee.

Akinremi is also Executive Director of the Africa Rapporteur Network, a nongovernmental organization that provides rapporteur, translation, and interpretation (RTI) services. He also served as the Regional Coordinator for the West Africa for African Civil Society for the Information Society (ACSIS), 7th Africa Rapporteur General of the African Internet Governance Forum.

Ali AlMeshal – At-Large Advisory Committee Asia/Australia/Pacific Region

Photo of Ali AlMeshal

Ali AlMeshal is currently the Head of Digital Business & Innovation at CrediMax-Bahrain. He is part of senior executive management, including the marketing and risk committees, and chairs the strategic business project committee. In this role, he is responsible for managing, directing, and participating in growing the digital innovation business base through different channels and business volume, coaching, and developing staff to ensure output quality in all sales and operations efforts, and tracking market performance. He is responsible for establishing and maintaining current top tier client accounts and acquiring new major potential client relationships. Prior to this, AlMeshal was Head of IT and Project Manager at CrediMax-Bahrain, responsible for the IT infrastructure and all other business IT related projects. He has 27 years of banking experience in the payment industry business, working in Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait. As a special assignment, he managed the setting up of a new joint venture company in Bahrain called Global Payment Services (GPS), a third-party processor for card business.

AlMeshal is the Vice Chair of Bahrain Internet Society (ISOC) and a former member of the Steering Committee for the Chapter Advisory Council in Global ISOC. He was the Vice Chair of ICANN's Asian, Australasian, and Pacific Islands Regional At-Large Organization (APRALO) for three terms. With APRALO, he led and managed the first APRALO mentorship program, was the APRALO delegate to At-Large Outreach and Engagement subcommittee, a member of the Finance and Budget subcommittee and the Technology Task Force. Additionally, he was on the Steering Committee for the ICANN Middle East Strategy Working Group.

AlMeshal obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from Bahrain University in business information systems and his Master of Business Administration from New York Institute of Technology. He is a Certified Bullet Proof Manager and received a diploma in disruptive strategy from Harvard Business School. He was on the jury of the Bahrain eContent award and eGov Excellence award and is an Advisory Board Member of Ahlia University in Bahrain. He has participated in many conferences and forums around the world as a speaker.

Tijani Ben Jemaa – At-Large Advisory Committee Africa Region

Photo of Tijani Ben Jemaa

Tijani Ben Jemaa has been an active ICANN community member since 2008. He is the former Vice Chair of both the African Regional At-Large Organization (AFRALO) and the At-Large Advisory Committee, as well as the founder and Co-Chair of the Middle East Space.

A founding Board member of the dotAfrica Foundation, Ben Jemaa serves on the Steering Committee of the .africa generic top-level domain. In addition, he is the Executive Director of the Mediterranean Federation of Internet Associations (FMAI). Trained as a telecommunication engineer, he was the Director at the Tunisian Broadcasting Agency until 2006.

Ben Jemaa is an active participant in many parts of the global Information Society eco-system including the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) where he served as a member of the Civil Society Bureau representing the Science and Technology family and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) at the National, sub-regional, regional and global level. He is the Vice Chair of the North African IGF. He has been a trainer at several Schools of Internet Governance (SIGs), including Tunisian, North African, West African, FFGI Francophone, and Middle East and Adjoining Countries SIGs. He is also a global member of the Internet Society.

Vittorio Bertola – Internet Architecture Board for Internet Engineering Task Force

Photo of Vittorio Bertola

Vittorio Bertola is the Head of Policy & Innovation at Open-Xchange, provider of open source email and Domain Name System solutions for hosting, service provider, and telecommunication companies. He develops and promotes new technical standards and advocates an open Internet based on user choice, privacy, and federation. In the last twenty years, Bertola has been involved with several Internet startups, including the early pan-European digital music platform Vitaminic. He has served in many positions in national and international Internet governance organizations, including as ICANN Board liaison, Chair of the At-Large Advisory Committee, and as a member of the United Nations' Working Group on Internet Governance.

Paul Diaz – Registry Stakeholder Group

Photo of Paul Diaz

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

Diaz 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, Diaz has served in leadership roles in the gTLD Registry Stakeholder Group (RySG), including as chair from 2015-2018.

Prior to joining PIR, Diaz 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, Diaz 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, Diaz is an avid traveler and has visited over 50 countries to date. He lives in northern Virginia with his wife and three children.

Judith Hellerstein – At-Large Advisory Committee North America Region

Photo of Judith Hellerstein

Judith Hellerstein is the Founder and CEO of Hellerstein & Associates, a research consultancy specializing in opening up telecom and technology opportunities worldwide. Hellerstein has over thirty years of experience in developing policies and regulations, building regulatory capacity, strategy development, broadband build-out, digital governance assessment and strategies, regulatory reform, competition law, and Internet governance issues. She worked on several high-profile projects while at the International Bureau of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, MCI Communications, and Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's Reinventing Government office before founding her firm.

Hellerstein is a passionate advocate for bringing connectivity to empower communities. She has advised regulators, governments, international organizations, commercial, and nonprofit clients around the world on the adoption of telecom laws and policies, competition policy, and the development of the information and communications technology (ICT) sector, including market and regulatory reforms. She has led several regional and national assignments for the World Bank resulting in reforms in their legal, regulatory, and ICT frameworks.

Hellerstein is very active within ICANN, serving as the chair of the At-Large Technology Task Force and was an active participant in several past Cross Community Working Groups, such as Actions Proceeds and Internet Governance. She has worked with actors across stakeholder groups in the Internet ecosystem to develop and manage Internet-related projects and campaigns.

Hellerstein is currently assisting the Department of Information and Communications in Papua New Guinea on the drafting, design, and implementation of Digital Government Act for Papua New Guinea and on digital government strategy, policies, and cyber issues.

Hellerstein has a master's degree in public policy from the Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in New York City, where she focused on international development. She was awarded a Public Fellowship Award and has published many papers relating to public policy in the ICT market.

Brajesh Jain – Address Supporting Organization

Photo of Brajesh Jain

Brajesh Jain is an independent consultant after very active corporate career. Previously, he served as the Vice President of the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) and on the Board of the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI). He was the elected member of Address Supporting Organization Advisory Council from the Asia Pacific region for the 2017-18 and 2019-20 terms. He served on the ICANN Nominating Committee in 2018 and 2019.

Jain has worked in the telecom and IT Industry for more than four decades. He has been involved with the Internet industry since 1999, when the Government of India licensed private ISPs. For ISPAI, he has worked closely with Department of Telecommunications, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). He has also held leadership positions at Bharat Electronics, CMC, RPG India, and a Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Japan joint project. Working with NTT experts, Jain gained valuable telecom networks and service experience in Japan, Philippines, Thailand, and Hong Kong.

He has regularly attended and contributed to events hosted by ICANN, Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), and other national and international Internet and telecom-related events such as the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), Euro IX, and the South Asian Network Operators Group (SANOG). Jain assisted in organizing conferences in India, such as the APNIC and Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies (APRICOT) in New Delhi and ICANN57 in Hyderabad. He was part of the team setting up the National Internet Registry (NIR) in India and IPv6 pilot project. He served as Chair of the New Delhi chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC) from 2008 to 2013.

Jain holds a degree in electronics engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Banaras Hindu University, and is a recipient of the University gold medal.

Juhani Juselius – Country Code Names Supporting Organization

Photo of Juhani Juselius

Juhani Juselius holds a Master of Science degree in engineering and he has been working in the information and communications technology (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 generic top-level domain (gTLD) registry at the peak of new gTLD boom.

Juselius has been elected to several board and other high-level positions in the leading associations of the ICT industry, including the ICANN ccNSO Council and Nominating Committee, 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.

Yrjö Länsipuro – At-Large Advisory Council Europe Region

Photo of Yrjö Länsipuro

Yrjö Länsipuro is an independent writer, lecturer, and consultant on information society and Internet issues. He has had  a career in television journalism, international broadcasting cooperation, public diplomacy, and Internet governance.

Länsipuro graduated from the University of Tampere, Finland, majoring in political science. He worked as a print and television journalist for over thirty years, including assignments as Bureau Chief in New York, Moscow, and Hong Kong. Engaged early in international cooperation among news broadcasters, he participated in the planning and implementation of regional television news exchanges among the Arab countries and the Asia Pacific as a part-time consultant for the German Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung (FES).

Joining the Finnish Foreign Service in 1992, he served as the Press Counselor of the Finnish Embassy in Washington, D.C and as Director General of the Department of Press and Culture of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Helsinki. Since 2005, he has led Finland's participation in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process, including national coordination of the implementation and follow up of the WSIS outcomes at various forums such as the International Telecoms Union, Commission on Science and Technology for Development, and Internet Governance Forum. He also represented the Finnish government on ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) served on the ICANN President's Strategy Committee.

After leaving the government service in 2009, Länsipuro continued his Internet governance work as an independent professional. He is the Vice President and serves on the Board of the Internet Society (ISOC) Finland chapter. He is a member of the Finnish national multistakeholder committee on WSIS follow-up and serves on the Boards of ICANN's European Regional At-Large Organization (EURALO) and the EuroDIG Support Association.

Länsipuro was the Chair of the 2013 ICANN Nominating Committee, Associate Chair in 2014, and a member in 2011-2012 and 2015. In 2016, he was appointed as the first At-Large liaison to the GAC, serving until the Annual General Meeting in 2021.

Pam Little – Registrar Stakeholder Group

Photo of Pam Little

Pam Little is Head of Policy & Compliance at Alibaba Cloud Domains division. She has been working in the domain name industry since 2009.

Most recently, she served on the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council as a representative of the Registrar Stakeholder Group for four years and as the Contracted Parties House Vice Chair of the Council for three years.

Scott McCormick – Commercial Business Users Constituency (Large)

Photo of 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.

McCormick also serves as an advisor to security-focused startups. Prior to Reciprocity, McCormick 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, McCormick worked in the U.S. intelligence community and served in the U.S. Air Force.

Amir Qayyum – Root Server System Advisory Committee

Photo of Amir Qayyum

Amir Qayyum is a professor and the Dean of External Linkages and International Collaborations (ELIC) at Capital University of Science and Technology (CUST), Islamabad, Pakistan. He received his doctorate in mobile wireless networks from the University of Paris-Sud, France.

Qayyum has been involved with ICANN since 2012, initially as an ICANN Fellow, then as the At-Large Structure (ALS) coordinator. He served as a member of the ICANN Nominating Committee from 2014-2017, representing the Asia Pacific Regional At-Large Organization (APRALO) and the At-Large Advisory Committee (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.

Since 1997, Qayyum 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 is one of the founding members and was the chair of the Board of Directors of the ISOC Islamabad chapter (2014-2019). He is on the Board of Directors for the Pakistan Internet Exchange (PKIX). He has been actively involved with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) since 2004, and has also served as the chair for the IEEE Islamabad Section (2017-2020), Professional Activities (2014-2016), and IEEE Computer Society Islamabad chapter (2009-2014), as well as the secretary and treasurer of the section (2011-2013).

Qayyum is the founding director of the Center of Research in Networks and Telecom (CoReNeT). He is the project director of many national and international funded research and development projects in the domain of wired and wireless networks, as well as the local coordinator of many Erasmus Mundus and Erasmus Plus European projects. He is a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Pak France Alumni Network (PFAN). In recognition of his services, he was awarded the "Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques" medal by the French government.

A philanthropist and actively involved in community service, Qayyum chairs the Board of Trustees of the Rifah Trust focused on education, health care and community service, and serves on the Board of Ehsas Trust for education and the Meethi Zindagi Foundation working for health care of diabetic patients.

Vanda Scartezini – At-Large Advisory Council Latin America/Caribbean Region

Photo of Vanda Scartezini

Vanda Scartezini was educated as an electronic engineer specializing in research and development management. 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 is board certified in both management and innovation.

She has advised, helped write, and implement many core pieces of legislation across Brazilian commercial life, including laws on integrated circuits, information technology, software, copyright, patent, and agricultural varieties. She owns two consulting companies dealing with information and communications technology (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 the Vice Chair of a local IT women's association called Nexti and a director of DNS Women, an international group for women's empowerment in the Domain Name System (DNS) industry.

Scartezini 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, Scartezini has served as the 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 ICT issues. She has helped various ICT companies to set up their manufacturing plants in Brazil and local small and medium enterprises absorb transferred technologies.

Vicky Sheckler – Intellectual Property Constituency

Photo of Vicky Sheckler

Victoria Sheckler is the Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). She helps develop strategy for industry-wide projects for the music industry and serves as corporate and compliance counsel to the RIAA.

Before joining the RIAA, Sheckler was a partner at Hogan & Hartson, LLP. Sheckler represented clients in several industries in licensing, commercializing, and acquiring or divesting intellectual property and related assets, as well as counseling clients on privacy, data security, and general corporate matters.

Sheckler graduated from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, magna cum laude. Ms. Sheckler received her Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from The George Washington University.

Adetola Sogbesan – Commercial Business Users Constituency (Small)

Photo of 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, Sogbesan 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 holds a Master of Science in information systems management from the University of Liverpool and recently began PhD research in cybersecurity and digital leadership.

Sogbesan 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.

John R. Woodworth – Internet Service Providers & Connectivity Providers Constituency

Photo of John R. Woodworth

John R. Woodworth is Chief DNS Architect with Lumen Technologies. He has worked in technology and telecommunications for over 20 years and served in the U.S. Air Force. He is active in the open-source software community and development of Internet standards. In addition, Woodworth is a mentor, avid innovator, and prolific inventor.

Woodworth believes strongly in community and making things better. He enjoys an open mind and seeking out interesting opportunities to learn. Woodworth's leadership, guidance, vision, and sense of community helps provide a safer, more secure, and more reliable infrastructure.

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."