Name: Benjamin Akinmoyeje
Declared region of residence: Africa
Gender: Male
Employment: PhD Research Student
Any conflicts of interest: None
Questions:
- Why do you want to serve on the EC? I want to serve on the EC because I want to help promote the voice of the non commercial constituency and advance the cause of the group, I also want to help enhance our visibility especially as the current period requires new means of engagement.
I look forward to continuing to help our community to grow in technical capacity, and to contribute to the PDPs. - Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the relevance of your personal and professional experience to serve on the NCUC Executive Committee, and identify any conflicts of interests you might have. Currently a PhD students of Informatics, Faculty of Computing and Informatics, Namibia University of Science and Technology, conducting academic research in the area of persuasive technology and mHealth apps for stress management amongst university students, I am the current EC Africa, and I am part of HR CCWP, part of multiple ICANN71 planning committees, also have contributed to some members training capacity building iniatives, support the social media outreach efforts of the NCUC.
- The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the Constituency. What level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role on a weekly and overall basis? Describe any concerns or limitations on your ability to attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN Meetings in person. he EC performs several functional responsibilities for the Constituency. What level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role on a weekly and overall basis? Describe any concerns or limitations on your ability to attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN Meetings in person.
As a research student, I have the privilege of time to participate actively in the ICANN process for up to 10 hours weekly to attend ICANN online meetings, possible area of concern may be the occasional need for quality internet access at meeting hours while I am at home. - Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep members apprised of your EC-related activities? As the chair and having seen previous ways past chairs have communicated with the community, I hope to emulate their communication style of always keeping members in the loop and also try to improve on it by actively engaging other platforms that technology has provided.
Such as social media platforms like Whatsapp and Twitter. As a chair, the monthly EC meetings will continue to and also devise quarterly calls or virtual town hall meetings for NCUC members. - How do you foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the future? What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why? Incumbent candidates should answer in a manner that is both backward and forward-looking, i.e. taking note of their contributions and work in the previous year. NCUC's functions in the future will only expand as the need for protection of the non-commercial individual users of DNS increases, as we begin to see ICANN being drawn to issues such as content moderation, and the EPDP phase 2 , use of AI, free speech (freedom of expression online) and the challenges of digital rights/ Human Rights.There may be a need for NCUC to consolidate with other SGs with similar interests to push a common agenda. In the phase of multiple regulatory laws, and ICANN needs to continue to function, we must continue to voice the non-commercial perspective and the policies that I can develop. More than ever before individual rights to privacy and data protection have been challenged in DNS space, the situation calls for NCUC to be alert to ensure ICANN policies are sensitive to these realities.
Kind regards,
Benjamin
Name: Olga Kyryliuk
Declared region of residence: Europe
Gender: Female
Employment: Program Manager, ABA ROLI
Conflict of interest: None
Questions:
1. Why do you want to serve on the EC?
ICANN environment is extremely time and energy-consuming, which is especially evident in the non-commercial part of the community. At this stage, I’m ready to contribute my time and expertise to strengthen NCUC from the inside and promote its interests within a broader ICANN community. I believe my legal background and experience in project management would be an asset to perform the duties expected from this role.
2. Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the relevance of your personal and professional experience to serve on the NCUC Executive Committee, and identify any conflicts of interests you might have.
I have PhD in International Law and am currently a Chair of the Executive Committee at SEEDIG - South Eastern European Dialogue on Internet Governance. In my daily job working as a Program Manager at the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative in charge of the regional Internet freedom advocacy program. Founder and advisor of The Influencer Platform, a Ukrainian-based think-and-do tank. I am actively involved in regional and international Internet governance and human rights initiatives: founding member of the Internet Freedom Network for Eastern, Central Europe, and Eurasia; former open Internet leader of the Open Internet for Democracy Initiative. Provide consultancy and expert support to Freedom House, Council of Europe and a range of international companies working worldwide. During the last eight years, I’m putting lots of efforts into improving civil society capabilities and facilitating multistakeholder cooperation at the national and regional levels. I would happily continue raising awareness of NCUC and bringing more voices to the community. I am well aware of the specifics of the European IG community and its problems, have an extensive professional network, including representatives of different stakeholder groups.
I do not have any conflict of interests that could prevent me from running for the NCUC EC position.
3. The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the Constituency. What level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role on a weekly and overall basis? Describe any concerns or limitations on your ability to attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN Meetings in person.
Having almost completed one term on the NCUC EC Europe position, I am fully aware of the required time commitment and am ready to dedicate my efforts to the development of the Constituency in the upcoming year. I have neither concerns nor reservations as to attending online and in-person meetings.
4. Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep members apprised of your EC-related activities?
Same as before, I will keep informing the membership about relevant updates from the EC work and available regional engagement opportunities. I will also strongly support the EC outreach and mentoring activities.
5. How do you foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the future? What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why? Incumbent candidates should answer in a manner that is both backward and forward-looking, i.e. taking note of their contributions and work in the previous year.
I believe that NCUC has brilliant minds among its members, but, unfortunately, burnout is commonplace. Therefore, it is extremely important for the EC to focus on fostering members’ active participation in WGs, and PDPs. We need to strive for better diversification of the workload in terms of representing the NCUC interests within ICANN, including via public comments and WGs. I would do my best to encourage more members to get involved in policy discussions and public comments drafting.
Name: Taiwo Peter Akinremi
Region of residence: Africa (AF)
Gender: Male
Employment: Data Protection and Privacy Specialist (Head, Operations), with Data Analytics Privacy Technology Ltd.
Any conflicts of interest: No
Why do you want to serve on the EC?
- The impact of pandemic has been felt to the level of participation in policy development and discussions which has in turn reduced participation. Volunteer burn-out is another major issue the community is facing. While we have experienced folks (professional background and ICANN experience), the participation and commitment remain low. Outreach requires a new dimension, monthly meetings require a new approach, while member participation calls for rethink.
There are 3 points why I accepted the nomination and 5 points why I am willing to serve as the NCUC EC Africa:
- Strong Regional Participation: Regional participation remains critical to the policy development and discussion in the ICANN environment. Because of covid-19 and vaccination issues, ICANN might be moving towards hybrid meetings and it is important for the NCUC EC to gather the momentum to engage in such a hybrid environment. As the Africa region is concerned, I will be working with African colleagues on an equal footing to remain motivated, recruit newbies, engage at different regional conferences such as IFF, IGF, AFRINIC, DRIF etc.
- Leadership: Growing the NCUC community to defend the rights of the noncommercial while helping ICANN to stay on course requires leadership, I mean committed leaders with leadership principles. NCUC leadership is critical to advising ICANN in the areas of DNS, privacy, data protection, human rights, education, and knowledge etc. through PDPs.
- NCUC Administration and Operations: NCUC is the core entity in protecting the interest of the non-commercial users within the ICANN environment. With such a vision, there is a need for an improved NCUC administration and operations. Others are getting louder day by day. It is time for NCUC to fine tune the strategy, rise, and coordinate the interest of the NCUC-user.
- Policy Work: How do we remain active and engage in the policy development process? How do we ensure support for our GNSO Councilor? How do we support the few active members in the NCUC community without allowing them to burn-out? Can we share the workload? Or do our members even have an idea or clarity to what NCUC stands for and be able to defend the same in policy discussions? As you can see, these are questions that will guide the coming NCUC EC to bring value to the table. As the EC Africa, I will be working with the NCUC EC, Councilors, Policy committee, members to take NCUC to the next level.
- Membership Values: Values are what drive membership. NCUC should be value driven once again whereby members are privy to access quality discussions, knowledge sharing and likewise contributes while engaging in policy and different working groups. When there is no value, outreaches yield passive results. As the EC Africa, I will be working with like minds to bring value back to the NCUC community.
Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the relevance of your personal and professional experience to serve on the NCUC Executive Committee and identify any conflicts of interests you might have.
- I earn my paycheck through providing Nigeria Data Protection Regulation/General Data Protection Regulation compliance service, advice and training. My IT experience and background includes Management/Technical/Audit/Policy that can be traced to the private sector, and non-governmental organizations.
Current Policy Experience within ICANN
- NCSG Representative to the GNSO, Standing Selection Committee
- NCUC Representative to the Policy Committee
- Vice Policy Committee-Chair.
NCUC Participation
- Monthly meetings participation e.g NCUC, PC etc.
- Public comment drafting.
- Review public comments.
- Assist the PC chair to follow up on public comments and its dissemination.
- Mailing list discussion contribution
Some Related Experience
- West Regional Coordinator, African Civil Society on Information Society
- 7TH Rapporteur General of the African Internet Governance Forum
- Program coordinator of Global Network for Cyber-solution
- Nigeria-Lead for Africa Open Data and Internet Research Foundation
- Nomcom Rep Internet Governance Caucus (IGC) and several WGs.
- Founder, Africa Rapporteur Network (Rapporteuring, Translation, Interpretation).
The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the Constituency. What level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role on a weekly and overall basis? Describe any concerns or limitations on your ability to attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN Meetings in person.
- There are no concerns. Yes, there is enough time to devote, as necessary.
Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep members apprised of your EC-related activities?
- Communication modes within the NCUC community includes the use of mailing-lists, regional mailing lists, monthly calls, website, and webinar series. I will leverage the existing channels to frequently update the members. However, its usages call for new strategies to update, and build a vibrant community of non-commercial users.
How do you foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the future? What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why? Incumbent candidates should answer in a manner that is both backward and forward-looking, i.e. taking note of their contributions and work in the previous year.
- In the current global policy discussions, there is no better time than now to protect the interest and privacy of noncommercial users. The covid-19 pandemic has made the world realize the criticality of the internet and its infrastructure. The influence from the global players is growing and that can endanger the noncommercial communications, activities, and their interest on the internet. The function of the NCUC is to continue influencing at the table, on an equal footing to protecting the activities and privacy of noncommercial users of the internet and internet infrastructure e.g. domain name system (DNS).
--
Best regards
Taiwo Peter Akinremi
Name: Ines Hfaiedh, Declared Region of residence: Africa, Gender: Female, Employment: Teacher and ICT Implementation in Education Specialist.
Conflicts of Interest : None
Why do you want to serve on the EC?
I wish to serve on the NCUC Executive Committee first to represent my region Africa in the best way possible in the next EC team. I hope to bring back the active participation and discussions that we used to have in the African mailing list, as well as the mentoring initiative that ECs used to perform towards newcomers from their region. I am confident that my academic, civil society, technical and administrative backgrounds in addition to my three year experience as an EC would help me achieve these goals and contribute to the well functioning of the constituency administration.
Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the relevance of your personal and professional experience to serve on the NCUC Executive Committee, and identify any conflicts of interests you might have.
I am a teacher and ICT Implementation in Education Specialist. I had the chance to be a recipient of a number of prestigious scholarships and fellowships among which was The Fulbright FLTA Fellowship which enabled me to study and be a Teaching Assistant at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC, USA. I am also a Diplo-certified Curator and Rapporteur and was among the first cohort of Diplo-certified Online Moderators in 2020.
I have joined NCUC since ICANN 55 which was my first experience as a Fellow and had the chance to be back as a Coach several times where I introduced newcomers to NCUC before the actual meeting and during their fellowship sessions. I have been in charge of the Secretariat of the last two editions of ICANN's MEAC SIG (School of Internet Governance) I am a member of ICANN’s Intercultural Awareness Program which we hope to bring back its shine.
I had the chance to be a Guest Speaker and session organiser at IGF 2016-2017-2019 and Booth Lead at IGF 2018 and Rightscon 2019. I was also a guest at several local, regional and international conferences such as the World Bank Group Youth Summit on “Rethinking Education for the next Millennium” and the European Educational Tool Portal has shared my tool of 'Interactive ICT Implementation in Formal and Informal Learning' and selected it for the International Tool Fair in Budapest, Hungary.
The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the Constituency. What level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role on a weekly and overall basis? Describe any concerns or limitations on your ability to attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN Meetings in person.
For the EC responsibilities, I generally do not see time limitations and concerns in performing the required tasks especially that now not only work but our life has shifted a little bit more to an online format. Besides, I enjoy some flexibility to attend meetings in person (if the format is back to in-person) as my job nurtures personal and professional development. During my previous terms, I had managed to organise my time in a way which enabled me to do some extra activities such as webinars for the Africa membership.
Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep members apprised of your EC-related activities?
I would keep members up-dated on our EC-related activities as well as news, call for comments etc through our NCUC mailing list and webinars when time allows. Also I wish to reactive our Tweeter account which used to be quite active from the part of all ECs. I also hope to keep the members apprised on our events through the NCUC blogs on our website to which I had previously contributed.
How do you foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the future? What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why? Incumbent candidates should answer in a manner that is both backward and forward-looking, i.e. taking note of their contributions and work in the previous year.
I believe that NCUC has always played a crucial role in defending non-commercial users’ rights. Those who have been here for some time know how our experienced/veterans have been at pains to protect those rights within ICANN’s policy processes and the IANA transition. That said, I am confident that the constituency can still do more in voicing the Non-Commercial Users concerns and defending their interests. I had previously expressed that the real challenge is making the members actually act as multipliers within their respective communities and that was brought to the discussion later by the ICANN board on a joint meeting. I wish that we also keep a spirit of openness and consultation with our membership and keep them in the loop of current discussions for more efficiency in our contributions.
I thank you for this opportunity and looking forward to serving the membership if elected.
Best regards
Name, declared region of residence, gender and employment; Kenneth Herman/North America/Male/Technology Consulting
Any conflicts of interest; I am unaware of any conflicts of interest.
Please provide a short (one or two paragraphs) answer to the following questions:
Why do you want to serve on the EC? After a lengthy career that has a substantial non-profit, community development focus, I believe that the NCUC EC is a natural fit as I gain experience with the ICANN processes. My experience leading multistakeholder, multicultural discussions and decision-making processes on community topics might be useful to the Executive Committee.
Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the relevance of your personal and professional experience to serve on the NCUC Executive Committee, and identify any conflicts of interests you might have. In a former career as a UN staff member for many years I regularly attended the IGF meetings and the WSIS forums, including in the 2019 WSIS forum presenting in a high-level panel on gender equality in technology, an interest I have pursued as an advisor to a New York-based institution working in that area. With that same organization I have helped to organize events at the UN that bring together international policy specialists with young people to advocate for gender balance in STEM fields.
I have also become more immersed in the ICANN processes by self-financing my attendance at ICANN 63 (Barcelona), 64 (Kobe) and 66 (Montreal), with a focus on the non-commercial sessions.
I have had my own personal domain since 1998 and have been instrumental in guiding non-profit organizations and individuals to the Internet. For example, I assisted in getting the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition (unscn.org) disentangled from the UN presence on the Internet by establishing their own domain (I did the initial registration and connected them with the appropriate local resources to maintain the Internet presence) and I did the same for a special interest group of returned Peace Corps volunteers to form a country-specific site, also by initiating their registration and ultimate transfer to the appropriate technical support services.
The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the Constituency. What level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role on a weekly and overall basis? Describe any concerns or limitations on your ability to attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN Meetings in person. I do not have any specific concerns or limitations regarding online participation in meetings of the EC, or in-person meetings when they resume. As mentioned, I have self-funded my attendance at many recent ICANN meetings over the past few years. While professional, and other, commitments may at times place limitations, I expect to be able to satisfy any reasonable time commitment required. My expectation is that there will be periods that will require substantial time, perhaps spanning many days over a period of weeks.
Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep members apprised of your EC-related activities? I understand that communication is a necessary element of community engagement, and in addition to the normal networking tools available, I would try to reach out individually to members for their input.
How do you foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the future? What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why? Incumbent candidates should answer in a manner that is both backward and forward-looking, i.e. taking note of their contributions and work in the previous year. As someone who is relatively new to the process, I would not presume to have suggestions that impact the NCUC function, scale or role. That said, I have observed within ICANN (not so much the org, but the greater community) a substantial focus on satisfying the needs of commercial entities, perhaps at the expense of the rights of individuals or other non-commercial stakeholders. As part of the community I hope to strengthen by ability to advocate for a greater non-commercial voice within the entire ICANN ecosystem. Within NCUC, my observation is that there may be some benefit to a stronger human-centred approach to policy in a way that focuses more directly on users, rather than institutions.
