Governance Committee of the Board (BGC)

Sarah Deutsch is a practicing attorney with considerable experience on Internet policy and related legal issues. Sarah worked for over 23 years at Verizon Communications as Vice President and Deputy General Counsel in its Legal Department. She managed the company’s global intellectual property practice and team of legal and technical personnel responsible for trademarks, domain names, copyrights, patent licensing and portfolio management and unfair competition issues. Her responsibilities included federal, state and international matters involving counseling, litigation, and Internet policy, including close coordination with Verizon’s technical teams and engineers.

Sarah has served as a subject matter expert in Verizon’s Legal Department on Internet issues since the mid 1990s. She has extensive experience in IP policy, online liability issues, privacy, cyber-security and consumer protection issues and related advocacy before the US Congress, federal agencies, state legislatures, and global bodies including WIPO, OECD, and other legislative and regulatory bodies. Sarah was the first attorney to oversee Verizon’s Privacy Office, including managing its Chief Privacy Officer, privacy attorneys and staff. She was a Lecturer of Law at Harvard Law School, teaching a class in online privacy in 2019.

Sarah was one of five negotiators for the U.S. telecommunications industry in the negotiations that led to the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. She also served as a Private Sector Advisor to U.S. Delegation to the WIPO Copyright Treaties and to the G8 Cybercrime Conference. Sarah was the 2014 recipient of the Managing IP In-House Counsel Award at the American Women in Business Law Awards. In 2009, she received the Public Knowledge President’s Award for Extraordinary Dedication to Protecting the Free Flow of Information Over the Internet.

Sarah has been involved in ICANN issues since its inception, working on numerous issues over the years with the Business Constituency and the IPC. She has also coordinated closely with the ISPCP. Sarah served as the Business Constituency’s Commercial Stakeholder Group representative, and also represented the BC on the Nominating Committee. She currently serves on the Board of the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, the nonprofit Edgemoor Research Institute and the nonprofit National Center for Health Research.

Prior to joining Verizon, Sarah was an associate in the law firm of Morgan, Lewis Bockius. She holds a J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law and a B.A. from Emory University. She was nominated to serve on the ICANN Board by the Nominating Committee in 2017. Her term will expire at the Annual General Meeting 2023.

J. Beckwith (“Becky”) Burr is a partner at Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis, LLP, a Washington, DC law firm. Her practice focuses on data protection, data governance, and cyber security. Prior to joining the firm, Becky was Neustar’s Deputy General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer. In that capacity, she was responsible for implementing the company’s “privacy by design” program, and ensuring that the company maintained state-of-the-art privacy and data security to protect customer and consumer information. As an expert on Internet governance issues, Ms. Burr also provided policy and legal advice related to the company’s provision of Internet domain name registry services. Becky joined Neustar in 2012 from the Washington, DC office of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, where she was a partner in the Communications, Privacy and Internet Law Practice Group and the Financial Institutions Practice Group. Her practice was both regulatory and transactional, focused on e-commerce, information technology, intellectual property licensing, and international regulation of communications and information technology. She was recognized as a Nationwide Leader in the Privacy and Data Security field in the 2007- 2012 editions of Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers in Business (Global 2011-2012) and selected by her peers for inclusion in the 2007- 2012 editions of The Best Lawyers in America, in the area of information technology law. Prior to joining WilmerHale, Becky served as the Associate Administrator and Director of International Affairs and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), where she was responsible for the privacy and Internet governance work streams described in the Clinton Administration’s Framework for Global Electronic Commerce. She also served as an Attorney Advisor at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from 1995 – 1997, where she participated in developing the FTC’s approach to competition, consumer protection, and privacy/data protection in the digital marketplace. Becky’s history with ICANN dates back to 1997 when she headed NTIA’s Office of International Affairs and participated in the U.S. Government (USG) team that produced the so-called “Green Paper” and “White Paper” on privatization of the domain name system. As head of NTIA’s Office of International Affairs, Becky was responsible for recognizing ICANN on behalf of the USG in 1998, and for negotiating the original Registry Agreement and Registrar Accreditation Agreement. She served as the U.S. representative to the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) in ICANN’s early years and, after leaving the USG in late 2000, represented registries, registry operators, and registrars in their dealings with ICANN as a lawyer in private practice. In that capacity, Becky represented individual sponsored and new gTLD applicants, as well as the Registrar Stakeholder Group in negotiating the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement. From 2006 through 2016, Becky served on the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) Council, first as a Nominating Committee (NomCom) appointee, and more recently as the representative of .US. Becky received a BA from Yale (1977), and a JD from Georgetown University Law Center (1987). She was selected by GNSO to serve on the Board commencing at the Annual General Meeting in 2016. She will begin her second term at the Annual General Meeting 2019.

Edmon Chung is a social innovator and entrepreneur. Edmon currently serves as the CEO of DotAsia Organisation, serves on the Executive Committee of Internet Society Hong Kong (ISOC HK), the Board of Make a Difference (MaD) Institute, and heads the secretariat for the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF). Edmon served also on the founding board of the Internet Governance Forum Support Association (IGFSA), continues to support its secretariat, cofounded the annual Hong Kong Kids International Film Festival (KIFF.Asia), and participates extensively on Internet governance and social innovation matters. Edmon is an inventor of patents of internationalized domain names (IDN) and email addresses technologies, and has served on many global IDN related technical and policy groups, that made possible the introduction of multilingual domain names and email addresses on the Internet. Edmon won the Most Innovative Award in the Chinese Canadian Entrepreneurship Award in 2001. In 2000, Edmon was selected by The Globe and Mail as one of the Young Canadian Leaders.

Between 2006 and 2010, Edmon served on the ICANN Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council, between 2010 and 2012 on the ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC), and between 2006 and 2011, as an elected member of the Elections Committee of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in the Information Technology Subsector. Edmon has a Bachelor of Applied Science and Master of Engineering from the University of Toronto. He was nominated to serve on the ICANN Board by the Nominating Committee in 2021. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2024.

Avri Doria is an independent researcher and educator based in Providence, RI, with a number of contracts with both non-governmental organizations and within the Internet technical community. As a technologist, Avri has been involved in the development of Internet protocols and architectures for over 30 years. She has been active in ICANN policy since 2005 and was nominated to serve on the ICANN Board by the Nominating Committee in 2017. Her term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2023. Avri was awarded the ICANN Multistakeholder award in 2014.

Danko is an Internet pioneer from Serbia. He was a founding partner in SezamPro, one of the first ISPs in Serbia and an initiator of reform in the then .YU country code top level domain (ccTLD). Subsequently, he was a member of the Board of Governors and later the Chief Executive Officer of the Serbian Internet Domain Names Registry (.RS ccTLD). In addition, Danko was a board member of CENTR (Association of European ccTLD registries) and a member of the UN IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group. Danko is a digital governance and policy expert. He holds a BA in Management of Information Systems from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, an Executive MBA from the IEDC, Bled School of Management, Slovenia, and he is a certified corporate director by INSEAD France and USA NACD. Danko was nominated to serve on the ICANN Board by the Nominating Committee in 2018. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting 2024.

Matthew Shears is an Internet and telecommunications policy consultant. Matthew spent a decade in Brussels working on EU standardization and telecommunications regulation before becoming involved in international Internet policy work, starting with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2005. Since then he has participated in a range of Internet policy and governance fora and processes, including the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), the World Telecommunications Policy Forum (WTPF), the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and was deeply involved in the work that led up to the IANA Stewardship transition and enhancing ICANN’s accountability. Matthew was a member of the UN Secretary General’s Multistakeholder Advisory Group on Internet Governance and is a member and past co-Chair of the non-governmental Advisory Network of the Freedom Online Coalition. He has worked for, among others, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), the Internet Society, Cisco, Teledesic and AT&T. A UK national, he received his MSc in European Studies from the London School of Economics and his BA in International Affairs from George Washington University. He was selected by the GNSO to serve on the Board and is entering his second term at the AGM in Hamburg in 2020.

León Sánchez is an intellectual property attorney graduated from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City. He also completed postgraduate studies in intellectual property at the UNAM and Internet Law at Harvard Law School. Since 2006 he has been a partner at Fulton & Fulton, a law firm specialized in intellectual property and IT law based in Mexico City, and is Head of the Intellectual Property division. Mr. Sanchez also serves on the Board of Directors for Trustnet Corporate Group, ISDI Mexico and several other non-for-profit organizations in Mexico. Since 2008 Mr. Sanchez is professor of Intellectual Property at the UNAM Law School. He has been an advisor to different Government bodies, including the Digital Strategy Coordination Office of the Mexican Presidency, the Special Commission on Digital Agenda and IT of the Mexican House of Representatives and the Science and Technology Commission of the Mexican Senate. He drafted the Internet Users Rights Protection Act for Mexico and has been very active on issues like ACTA, SOPA, TPPA and other local initiatives of the same kind, always advocating to defend users’ and creators’ rights in order to achieve a balance between regulation and freedom. Mr. Sanchez has served in ICANN as the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) Vice-Chair and Co-Chair of the Cross Community Working Group (CCWG) on Accountability where he has been deeply involved with the IANA Stewardship transition process. Mr. Sanchez was elected by the At-Large community to be its designated Director on the ICANN Board of Directors from 2017 to 2020. He was elected by the At-Large community of individual Internet users worldwide to serve as an ICANN Board Director for a three-year term (November 2017 - November 2020).