Akram Atallah, chief operating officer at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), is moving sideways to lead a new department – the generic domains division (GDD).
Atallah will become GDD divisional president on July 1, and will be replaced by Susanna Bennett, who is currently chief financial officer at technology companies Jazz Technologies and Jazz Semiconductor.
According to a blog post by ICANN president Fadi Chehadé, the new division will include the generic top-level domain (gTLD) operations, DNS (domain name system) industry engagement, and online community services departments.
Chehadé said the change will meet the “tremendous increase in scale resulting from the new gTLD program” and “ensure ICANN’s operational excellence”.
He added: “Susanna will help to deliver on ICANN’s agility, accountability and visibility.”
Chehadé said he is creating another new position, to manage technical and security operations, which is yet to be filled.
Meanwhile, ICANN has appointed Kuek Yu-Chuang as vice president for global stakeholder engagement for the Asia region. He will assume the role on August 1, 2013. Kuek is senior director at Yahoo, where he leads the company’s public policy efforts in the Asia Pacific and Latin America regions. He has also helped Singapore’s government to develop IP policy in the past.
This article was first published on 10 June 2013 in World IP Review
icann, akram atallah, susanna bennett, jazz technologies, fadi chehade
