NomCom confirms Americans rejected from ICANN board

North American candidates for ICANN’s board of directors are having their applications politely rejected, the Nominating Committee has confirmed.

Speaking to the GNSO Council at ICANN 82 in Seattle yesterday, NomCom chair-elect Tom Barrett said ICANN’s rules forbid the committee from now considering candidates from the region.

“When we opened the application window, January 15, there were no geographic restrictions for these three positions,” he said. “As you know, that has now changed…. We’ll be maxed out terms of the geographic limitation for North America.”

The specific changes of circumstance are the recent elections of Canadian Byron Holland by the ccNSO and American Greg DiBiase by the GNSO.

ICANN’s bylaws state that no more than five voting members of the board, excluding the CEO, may be from the same region. The board already has three other North Americans.

Candidates from North America who had already applied for the three open board seats will be emailed to inform them they are no longer eligible, Barrett said.

Candidates that had identified as North American but have dual citizenship with a country in a different region are eligible to reapply under their other affiliation, he said.

Two out, two in as NomCom picks new ICANN directors

Two ICANN directors will lose their seats on the board and be replaced by newcomers at the Org’s annual general meeting later this year.

Vice chair Danko Jevtović and Edmon Chung, who have served two and one of the maximum three three-year terms respectively, will depart, according to the announcement of this year’s Nominating Committee picks.

They will be replaced by Amitabh Singhal, from the Asia-Pacific region, who I believe is an Indian internet policy expert who founded .in registry NIXI and also sits on the board of .org manager Public Interest Registry.

Also named, Miriam Sapiro, who I can only assume is Ambassador Miriam Sapiro, a US Trade Representative under the Obama administration who also held a senior policy role at Verisign for a couple of years two decades ago before leaving on acrimonious terms.

Chair Tripti Sinha of North America has also been reappointed for a final term.

The noobs, who both seem incredibly well-qualified for their new roles, will take their seats for the first time at the end of ICANN 81 in Istanbul in October.

Correction: Sinha’s seat is safe

Last Friday, I speculated that, based on my back-of-the-envelope calculations, ICANN chair Tripti Sinha could find herself ineligible to continue on the ICANN board of directors this November, due to geographic diversity quotas.

My calculations were incorrect, it turns out. While she still needs to be reappointed by the Nominating Committee, Sinha is not limited by the geographic diversity limits. I’ve deleted the article and apologize for the error.

Doria leaving ICANN board a loss for new gTLD program

ICANN’s Nominating Committee has announced its 2023 selections for many of the Org’s leadership positions, and the big shocker is that director Avri Doria is not among the picks.

NomCom said it has reappointed lawyer Sarah Deutsch for a third three-year term, but Doria’s seat is being taken by Catherine Adeya, a Kenyan tech policy expert who describes herself as a “Senior Digital Transformation & Governance Specialist”.

Adeya holds various directorships and was director of research at the World Wide Web Foundation for a couple of years until layoffs in late 2022, according to her socials.

While Adeya seems incredibly well-qualified for the role, I can’t help but lament the loss of Doria’s institutional expertise. She, along with fellow ICANN lifer Becky Burr, have recently been doing a pretty good job working with the GNSO to help oil the wheels of implementation and get the new gTLD program up and running again.

The NomCom picks mean that the number of voting Africans on the 20-person board doubles from one to two and the number of North Americans is reduced by one. The gender mix of course remains the same, with six out of the 16 voting seats filled by women.

There’s been a lot of talk this year, particularly from chair Tripti Sinha, about a goal to achieve “gender parity” in ICANN’s leadership positions, and NomCom’s 2023 appointments certainly seem to reflect that.

Despite as few as 27% of the 155 applicants ticking the female box on the application form, versus 59% male, only two of the nine open positions were filled by men.

Two of the nine hail from Asia-Pacific, with three from Africa, two from North America, and one each from Europe and Latin America.

ICANN’s bylaws require at least one director from each of the five geographic regions and the board every year encourages NomCom to keep gender and geographical diversity in mind when making their picks.

All the NomCom picks take their seats at the end of ICANN’s public meeting this October.

ICANN wants more newbies on its board

ICANN is planning changes to how its board of directors are picked, including new measures to get more community virgins around the table.

Under proposed new rules for its Nominating Committee, which chooses eight of the 20 directors, at least three directors at any given time would have to be “unaffiliated”.

The definition of “unaffiliated” is extremely broad, seemingly ruling out anybody who has ever had any professional involvement with the ICANN community whatsoever. Even people who have showed up at ICANN meetings on their employer’s dime would be excluded.

By my reckoning, only two of the current crop of eight NomCom appointees could possibly meet this definition, based on their biographies.

The new rules would give NomCom some flexibility in cases where it really can’t find an otherwise qualified director without any ICANN ties.

NomCom members would also get their own terms extended under the proposals, from one year to two, in order to improve institutional memory. Some current members would have their terms extended while others would not.

To tackle the same continuity issues, ICANN also wants to create a Nominating Committee Standing Committee — that’s right, an entity with two “Committees” in its name — to oversee the NomCom.

The four-person committee would be made up of former NomCom members and would be tasked with things like reviewing the previous hiring cycle and suggesting possible procedural changes. It would have no input on who gets hired and fired.

The proposals, which originate from a review that began in 2016, are open for public comment until May 29.

ICANN rushes mystery directors onto board in apparent bylaws breach

ICANN is hurrying two new directors onto its board despite that fact that hardly anybody, apparently including the people who this week gave them the nod, seemed to know who they are.

The Org also seems to have technically breached its bylaws with the timing of the move, which also sees chair Maarten Botterman appointed for another three-year term.

Earlier this week the Empowered Community Administration, which has broad powers to hire and fire directors, submitted ICANN-drafted letters formally approving this year’s Nominating Committee picks — Botterman, Christopher Chapman and Sajidur Rahman.

But I’m told that the ECA, like the rest of us, were not given any information by ICANN about the two newcomers beyond their names and the geographic regions they hail from. They were basically waved onto the board blind, it seems.

Photographs subsequently published on the NomCom web site confirm the two directors’ identities. They’re the former head of the Australian Communications and Media Authority Chris Chapman, and Indonesian venture capitalist Sajid Rahman of MyAsiaVC.

Judging by the ICANN bylaws, approval by the ECA — which comprises one person from each of the ASO, the ccNSO, the GNSO, the ALAC and the GAC — is pretty much just a rubber-stamp. All the due diligence is done by NomCom and the Org.

But the appointments appear to amount to a technical bylaws breach on timing grounds, coming about a month late. The bylaws state:

At least two months before the commencement of each annual meeting, the Nominating Committee shall give the EC Administration (with a copy to the Decisional Participants and Secretary) written notice of its nomination of Directors for seats with terms beginning at the conclusion of the annual meeting, and the EC Administration shall promptly provide the Secretary (with a copy to the Decisional Participants) with written notice of the designation of those Directors.

This year’s AGM will be held in Kuala Lumpur from September 17, with the new directors taking their seats at its conclusion on September 22. So NomCom seems to have missed its “at least two months before” deadline by a month. ECA approval came August 15.

This year’s AGM is a little earlier than usual, which may help explain the problem. They’re usually held in October or November, and there hasn’t been one held in September since 2001.

NomCom also missed the two-month window in 2020, by an even bigger margin, for entirely understandable pandemic-related reasons. It announced its selections just a couple of weeks before the AGM.

Diversity takes a hit as NomCom replaces two ICANN directors with newcomers

ICANN will be left with fewer women and Africans on its board of directors following this year’s Nominating Committee selections, after which apparent community newcomers will take seats.

NomCom last night announced that its three picks for the board, due to take or retake their seats at the Annual General Meeting in Kuala Lumpur next month, are Maarten Botterman, Christopher Chapman and Sajidur Rahman.

Botterman is of course the current chair, and his reappointment was surely never in any doubt. He’ll be entering his third and final term at the AGM.

Less is known about the two newcomers. ICANN has so far provided no biographical information about them beyond the geographic region they represent. Botterman is European and both Chapman and Rahman are from Asia-Pacific.

Both new appointees have very common, google-resistant names, and neither appears to have a track record of vocal ICANN community participation.

Chapman, if I had to guess, would be Chris Chapman, the former long-term independent media regulator from Australia. Sajid Rahman is such a common name I don’t think I could confidently make a call on his identity early doors.

What we do know is that they’re both Asia-Pac, and they’re both replacing one-term African directors.

Leaving the board at the AGM will be NomCom’s 2019 picks Mandla Msimang from South Africa and Ihab Osman from Sudan. This means the sole remaining voting African on the board come October will be South African Alan Barrett.

Msimang leaving and being replaced by a man of course changes the gender mix. After the AGM, there will be six women on the 20-seat board, five out of the 16 voting seats.

Note that I’m not analyzing the picks by some subjective “woke” criteria — ICANN has strict rules about geographic representation in its bylaws and every year its board of directors encourages NomCom to consider the gender mix when making its selections.

The bylaws state that each of the five geographic regions must have at least one seat on the board, and that no one region can have more than five directors.

That said, ICANN doesn’t make it easy to figure out which directors hail from which regions. There’s no published breakdown that I’m aware of and many directors have multiple citizenships and/or are long-term residents of nations outside their birth region.

Two other directors have their current terms ending next month — GNSO appointee Becky Burr (North America), who has been reappointed for a third term, and Akinori Maemura (Asia-Pac) who is being replaced by Christian Kaufmann (Europe) as an ASO appointee.

NomCom broke down the gender and geographic mix of applicants for all the open board and non-board positions here.

ICANN names NomCom chairs

ICANN has announced its picks for chair and chair-elect of its influential Nominating Committee, raising questions about the latter role for not the first time.

The board of directors has picked Vanda Scartezini as chair and Amir Qayyum as chair elect, according to a newly published resolution.

It’s the third time in recent years that the previous year’s chair-elect, in this case Damon Ashcraft, has not gone on to become chair, as the ICANN bylaws anticipate.

The bylaws say that the chair-elect, who does not have a vote, is basically an apprentice to the chair who spends a year on the committee to prepare her or him for the big seat. The bylaws also say that the ICANN board can pick another person for chair if it wants to.

In this case, while Scartezini was on the 2022 committee she was not chair-elect.

Something similar happened last year, when the board picked 2021 chair-elect Tracy Hackshaw for chair, then changed its mind two weeks later.

It also caused a controversy in the 2015 cycle when it snubbed Ron Andruff.

The NomCom is responsible for picking several leadership roles in the ICANN community, including three directors per year.

New chair Scartezini is from the At-Large community and Brazil. Qayyum is from the root server community and Pakistan.

Surprise eleventh-hour picks for NomCom leadership after ICANN U-turn

ICANN has named the new chair of its influential Nominating Committee, and it’s not who you might have expected.

The Org last night said Michael Graham will chair NomCom for the 2022 cycle, with Damon Ashcraft taking the chair-elect role.

The news came weeks later than expected — live during an online Prep Week session of ICANN 72 last night in fact — and followed a secretive ICANN vote that saw the board of directors U-turn on its initial selection.

ICANN said that 2021 chair-elect Tracy Hackshaw — who under ICANN convention was the heir apparent for the chair, replacing Ole Jacobsen — had “withdrew his candidacy for 2022 NomCom Chair due to a new professional role he has taken”.

No additional information on the withdrawal, which came as a surprise even to NomCom insiders, was made available. Hackshaw has not responded to an October 5 request for comment and does not appear to have addressed his withdrawal in public.

It’s the second time in recent years a chair-elect has not gone on to take the chair. In 2015, Ron Andruff was snubbed after poor peer-evaluation results. Hackshaw, however, appears to have scored more respectably in his review.

While the leadership picks were not revealed until the 11th hour, it seems ICANN actually made its choice in secret two weeks ago.

In a September 30 vote, the board selected Graham and Ashcraft.

But that resolution actually overrode and replaced a September 12 resolution, which was never published, appointing Hackshaw as NomCom chair. The September 30 resolution states:

Whereas, prior to publishing the Approved Resolutions of the 12 September 2021 Board meeting, the Board became aware of new information that is relevant to the evaluation of candidates.

Whereas, taking into account this new information, the BGC has recommended that the Board rescind its previous resolution and approve Michael Graham be appointed as the 2022 NomCom Chair and J. Damon Ashcraft be appointed as the 2022 NomCom Chair-Elect

That resolution was redacted in its entirety until last night. For some reason ICANN found it necessary to keep its NomCom picks secret until the very last moment.

The 2022 NomCom has the responsibility of picking three ICANN directors, one member of the Public Technical Identifiers board, two ALAC reps, and one member each of the ccNSO Council and GNSO Council.

Both chair and chair-elect are IP lawyers. New chair Graham is travel company Expedia’s top IP guy, and Ashcraft is a partner at the law firm Snell & Wilmer. It’s Ashcraft’s second go at the job in recent years, having chaired the 2019 committee.

Due to the leadership kerfuffle, the NomCom is starting its work on this cycle slightly later than usual.

ICANN director picks for 2021 revealed

ICANN’s Nominating Committee has revealed its three picks for the organization’s board of directors, with one member been swapped out for a newcomer.

Lito Ibarra will be replaced by Edmon Chung, while Danko Jevtović and Tripti Sinha see their seats kept safe for their respective second three-year terms.

Ibarra works for El Salvador’s .sv top-level domain registry and represented the Latin America region on the board. By the time the handover occurs in October, he will have served two of his possible three-year terms.

He’s being replaced by Chung, a long-time industry and ICANN participant perhaps best known as the CEO of DotAsia, which runs .asia. As you might expect, he represents the Asia-Pacific region.

While the appointments clearly alter the regional mix somewhat, they equally clearly do nothing to tilt the gender balance on the male-heavy board, which ICANN has stated is a desirable goal for NomCom.

NomCom also revealed its picks for two members of the GNSO Council, one member of the ccNSO Council and three members of the At-Large Advisory Committee, which include some familiar names.

NomCom said it had 116 applications in total, over half of which came from Africa and Asia-Pac.

For the first time since 2006, ICANN did not disclose the gender mix of the applicants. It’s not clear why.

The full list of successful applicants can be found here.