I am Julf (Johan) Helsingius, Finnish citizen resident in the Netherlands (so my region is Europe), male and currently employed as chairman of the board at IoT service provider BaseN.
As far as I know, I don't have any conflict of interest, but in the spirit of transparency I am currently serving as co-chair for the RIPE cooperation working group.
As NCSG chair I have had to mainly focus on the administrative side, with a lot of operational issues and procedures to sort out, so I am looking forward to a possibility of getting my teeth into some actual policy issues again.
As to qualifications, I have served as chair, board member and/or CEO for many organisations, both commercial and non-commercial. My privacy activism and strong belief in human rights is pretty well known, and some of my activities earned me, among other things, the EFF Pioneer award back in 1997, a year before my fellow Swedish-speaking Finn Linus Torvalds, and four years before the other award recipient in our group, Stephanie Perrin.
My interest in ICANN kind of goes back to a dinner at one of the PC Forum events (1998?) organized by Ester Dyson, where I got to witness an interesting discussion between Esther and Ira Magaziner, but more recently I have spent 2 years as NomCom appointee to the GNSO Council and 3 years as the GNSO Council liaison to the GAC, as well as chairing the GNSO Standing Selection Committee and participating in a bunch of Accountability WS2 working groups and the rather traumatic first EPDP.
As my employment is part-time these days, I have the time required.