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Dear NPOC Members,
Namaste from Nepal!

I am thrilled to accept my candidacy for the position of Vice Chair within NPOC ICANN, representing the vibrant Asia Pacific Region. As the President of the Nepal Internet Foundation and a dedicated advocate for non-commercial stakeholders, I bring a wealth of experience and a deep commitment to advancing the interests of diverse community within ICANN.

•Name: Bikram Shrestha
•Affiliation: President- Nepal Internet Foundation - Civil Society, Professional- Head Digital Banking- Sanima Bank,
•Position applied for: Vice Chair
•Why you are running for the position: I am the founding treasurer and past President of the Internet Society Nepal, the Founding President of the Nepal Internet Foundation, the Vice-Chair of the Nepal IGF and the Founding Treasurer of the IT Security Emergency Response Team in Nepal. I am also the Co-Chair of the Cooperation SIG APNIC. I am delighted to share that APrIGF 2021 and APAN 2023 took place in Kathmandu without a hitch with active hosting/supporting organisation. I have been actively contributing to the Internet community for more than 20+ years. I have been helping Nepal's ICT industry develop through a variety of policy advocating and capacity-building programs. I coordinated for both successful initiatives: the first npSIG and the Nepal IGF. I was also an APRICOT 2018 host organizer team.
I am the first representative of my nation to join ICANN as of the ICANN 45 Toronto Meeting. I was encouraged to join NPOC and look for opportunities to provide good for the constituency, noncommercial benefits from my participation in more 10 ICANN meetings as a fellow, alumni, mentor and coach involvement in various activities such as IPv6, security/DNSSEC, privacy, intellectual property, and enforcement, advocating for public interests in IDN-related policies, UA-tech, and focused on global IGF, IANA, policy activities, law enforcement, and Internet policies such as WHOIS and new gTLDs.

I have actively engaged with non-commercial organizations, Internet users, and policymakers in region. I have witnessed firsthand the unique challenges and opportunities faced by non-commercial stakeholders in the Asia Pacific. If elected as Vice Chair, I will leverage my experience to drive meaningful change and ensure our voices are heard.

My key priorities as Vice Chair will include:

• Regional Collaboration: I have a strong belief in the effectiveness of teamwork and collective effort. I will promote effective collaboration and strong partnerships among non-commercial stakeholders in the Asia Pacific region, allowing us to tackle common problems and advocate for laws that take into consideration the particular requirements of our region.

• Policy Advocacy: I am passionate about influencing public policies in Asia Pacific that impact non-commercial stakeholders and civil society. I will take a proactive role in ICANN's policy-making processes, advocating about regulations that support an accessible, open, and inclusive Internet ecosystem. I will work closely with our community to understand our diverse needs and ensure they are adequately represented within ICANN. 

• Capacity Building and Engagement: Empowering non-commercial stakeholders and Civil Society in the Asia Pacific region is essential for meaningful participation in ICANN processes. I will prioritize capacity-building initiatives, such as training programs, workshops, and mentorship opportunities, to enhance our community's knowledge and skills. Additionally, I will encourage active engagement, particularly from underrepresented groups, to foster diversity and inclusivity within our community.

• Strengthening NPOC: As Vice Chair, I will work towards strengthening NPOC as a leading voice for non-commercial stakeholders globally. I will foster transparency, accountability, and effective communication within our constituency, ensuring that all members have equal opportunities to contribute, shape policies, and actively participate in ICANN's activities.
With my proven leadership, dedication to non-commercial stakeholders and Civil Society, and a deep understanding of the Asia Pacific region within ICANN, I am confident in my ability to effectively serve as Vice Chair within NPOC. I humbly request your support and vote to drive positive change and advocate for the interests of non-commercial stakeholders in the Asia Pacific.

•Do you have any conflict(s) of interest: Unfortunately, I have no conflicts of interest.

•How many hours per week you are able to dedicate to the position: I am prepared to contribute as needed and will be available off-hours as well.

•Are you involved in any working Groups or PDP efforts, if so please state: UA- Tech Working Group (WG) members and other working groups too.

Step 3: Statement of Interest (SOI)
All nominees are expected to submit a brief statement explaining why they believe they are a suitable candidate and also must complete or update their Statement of Interest.

Dear NPOC colleagues,
I am writing to express my keen interest in serving as the Vice Chair of NPOC, representing the Asia Pacific Region. I have been actively involved in Internet governance initiatives, policy discussions, and community engagement activities within our region. It is with great enthusiasm and commitment that I present my Statement of Interest (SOI) for this esteemed position.

As Vice Chair, I aim to contribute to the collective efforts of NPOC  and further the interests of non-commercial stakeholders in the Asia Pacific. My SOI outlines the following key areas of focus:

• Regional Representation: I will be a strong advocate for the diverse voices and interests of non-commercial stakeholders in the Asia Pacific Region. I will actively engage with our community, encouraging active participation, and ensuring their concerns and perspectives are effectively represented within ICANN's decision-making processes.

• Policy Advocacy: I am deeply passionate about influencing Internet governance policies that align with the needs and aspirations of non-commercial stakeholders and Civil Society in our region

I have been serving as the Nepal Internet Foundation's president for the past 3.5 years. I have been proposed as the NPOC Vice Chair for the upcoming years. I can use my expertise, my local and international network, and my passion to assist NPOC accomplish its goals and objectives.

If elected, I will contribute a unique Asian-Pacific perspective that will broaden the NPOC's diversity on all fronts and from a regional perspective. I additionally try my utmost to spread awareness of the difficulties faced by APAC's billions of Internet users. Issues with the Internet are widespread, but they could have a greater impact in undeveloped and developing countries.

My experience will be of assistance in assisting NPOC in closely cooperating with dynamic teams and other working groups. My experience working with a variety of stakeholders, such as the commercial sector, government, civil society, international organizations, and academia, will be a valuable asset in enhancing the visibility of NPOC. My technical knowledge, in my opinion, will make a good addition for comprehending the Internet's difficulties from a comprehensive perspective.

The challenges in terms of security and privacy for the Internet's present and future are crucial. The biggest challenges facing underdeveloped and developing economies are how to make these concerns treated as a higher priority in the policy agenda, despite the fact that various technical solutions may be produced.

In order to provide tools for formulating policies for an open and reliable Internet, NPOC will coordinate efforts with its members to establish itself as a reliable information source for policymakers.

In addition, I look forward to responding to any questions you may have on my candidacy for NPOC Vice Chair.

Thank you and best wish for all candidates. 

Caleb has been guiding me on all the policy issues, and I have been active on the NPOC Policy team for some time. One of my goals has been to get more people involved in Policy issues. Many of the policy issues are technical and for that reason many people shy away from it even after they have taken the policy writing course. Many people already are working on policy issues, except they do not realize they are writing policy. Whenever a person posts a public comment on a policy document, review of a program or working group, or any document they are writing policy. Besides the traditional policy issues so as the Transfer review policy, Domain policy, subsequent Procedures, or IPN, there is also operational policy. Some examples are the Strategic Plan, the Travel Policy, work on the multi-stakeholder policy and reviews such as the NomCom Review that is currently out.  These are all Operational Policy and are a very easy way for NPOCers to get involved and in drafting policy comments.   I hope to copy what was so successful in At Large these past few years and bring these innovations to NPOC. We should have monthly or bi-monthly policy calls for the community. We need to increase engagement in Policy areas and some of the best way of doing that is a renewed focus on Operational Policy and a careful picking of other Policy issues that are pertinent to the non-profit user such as the Transfer review policy. 

As you can see I am passionate about ICANN policy issues and also in raising the profile of NPOC both with in the NCSG but also with in the GNSO and other areas.  To do that, we need more involvement of NPOC participants in policy issues.  If you vote for me as Policy Chair.  I hope to do just that.

I have gone through the ICANN Leadership Academy and also the ICANN Intercultural Awareness program. Moreover, I have gone through On conscious bias, Governance, leadership, chairing and other training these past two years as  NomCom representative and can bring this knowledge to NPOC.

Here is my GNSO SOI  https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=64064480

for your review and I hope to have your vote for Policy Chair.  I look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions as we work to have an active and participatory NPOC

Name: Emmanuel Vitus Agbenonwossi

Biography & CV: 

A Digital Policy researcher bridging humanity and technology through social sciences, media  and Public Policy. My interests span from Internet governance & Public policy to journalism and platforms’ democracy.

I have been instrumental in implementing a couple of National and Regional Internet governance Initiatives including, the Togo Internet Governance Forum and the West Africa Internet Governance Forum. I am  the coordinator of the West African School on Internet Governance and faculty member of the Ghana and Benin School on Internet Governance. I have  also served within Internet governance bodies, including Internet Society and ICANN's NPOC as General Secretary. I am the representative of  the NCSG at the EPDP on Internationalised Domain Names. 

In the last few years, I was a consultant on projects to organizations, including Association for Progressive Communications, the Web Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Paradigm Initiative, Local Development Research Institute (LDRI), Alliance for Affordable Internet, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), UNESCO, The Humboldt Institute for the Internet and Digitalisation, Berlin's Digital Society Institute, 

etc.  I authored and co-authored a number of articles and a book chapter on Internet governance, IT policy, AI  and Internet governance. My interest topics include AI, Data Governance, IT policy, Internet Governance, Digital Rights and Privacy.  I am  a certified Scrum Master and member of the Project Management Institute of France. I speak French, English and over 9 African languages. 

Affiliations:  Sciences Po School of Public Affairs (France), University of Central Lancashire – UCLan, Afrotribune

Position applied for: Policy Chair for NPOC 

Why I applied for this position:

As you are all aware, the Policy Chair Role is one of the important roles within NPOC Leadership because most of what we do is policy and for the last few years we have not been doing great in that regard.  During the last year meeting in The Hague, I accepted the EC’s mission to join the available EPDPs. I first joined

•Name: Raoul Plommer 

•Affiliation: NPOC GNSO
•Position applied for: Membership Chair
•Why you are running for the position?:

I would like to lay out plans on what I would like to do as the new membership chair, since these duties weren't carried out quite like I would have liked to see them carried out.

1. We need to be able to identify our active members and help them collaborate on making new policy from NPOC's perspective. We also need to get rid of members who have been inactive for two years or more.

2. We need to keep our membership list up-to-date; even for this election some members didn't have their email addresses on our database, and at the same time there have been people on the mailing list that were supposed to be removed from it more than one year ago.

3. Even though getting new members to NPOC is a crucial duty of the membership chair, we need to make sure these new members are advised and guided to start making policy for NPOC. Currently, it's almost only the EC that is working at NPOC.

4. If I will get elected, I will focus on getting new active members that actually do policy. Even if we get a few that are contributing to our work, it would already be better, than just getting new members that lack the knowledge to contribute to our work. Quality over quantity is a big priority here.

•Do you have any conflict(s) of interest?: None.
•How many hours per week you are able to dedicate to the position: 8hrs
•Are you involved in any working Groups or PDP efforts, if so please state: TPR WG

Dear NPOC Members,

As with tradition, please find below my Candidate statement.

Name : Caleb Ogundele

Current Seat I'm holding:  Membership Committee Chair

Position applied for:  Membership Committee Chair

Affiliation:  African Academic Network on Internet Policy (AANOIP)

Why you are running for the position?: It is very important to connect with members who are stakeholders for growth . Engaging with other stakeholders and varied interests within the ICANN community to understand the work that NPOC does with the view of serving as a more vocal voice of reasoning and logic during engagements with other communities within and beyond ICANN. Additionally, the bedrock of the GNSO which NPOC is part of is the policy and public comments for the Not-for-Profit Orgs. I have participated in a couple of draft documents used to engage within the NCSG and NPOC. As part of these efforts, I have tried to stimulate interest of our members while communicating with members by calling their attention to public comments that they can participate in and contribute to.

During my tenure as Communication Chair, I have had the privilege of working with the Executive Team and the NPOC community to achieve some notable accomplishments. We successfully revamped our website, ensuring a user-friendly experience and mobile responsiveness. We also implemented a regular newsletter to keep our members informed. These achievements were made possible through the dedication and collaboration of our team.

As Membership Chair, I am committed to building upon our progress and achieving even greater heights within the ICANN community. It is crucial for NPOC to have a strong and vibrant membership base, and I believe in connecting with stakeholders and fostering understanding of NPOC's work. I aim to serve as a vocal voice of reason and logic during engagements with other communities within and beyond ICANN.

In addition to my involvement within NPOC, I have actively participated in policy development and public comment processes within the GNSO and NCSG. I have also undertaken outreach efforts to engage non-profit and civil society domain owners, promoting the benefits of participation in ICANN and NPOC. These experiences have reinforced my belief in the power of bottom-up consensus and the importance of member engagement.

Recently, during a major internet governance meeting in my region, I and another member of the NPOC Excom carried out outreach to engage Not-for-Profit, Civil Society domain owners who previously never had a clear understanding of what they stand to benefit in participating in ICANN and by extension NPOC. This was done through a panel session and the distribution of promotional materials of NPOC.

I strongly believe that if elected once again as your membership committee chair, my work within the leadership of the NPOC will reflect actionable outcomes, an increase in NPOC’s membership activities, member’s quarterly “ask-your-executives anything” sessions, educational webinars as well as outreach and engagements that serves all member’s interest.
  

I represent diversity, age, and regional wise, and with the support of members, they will continue to experience a bottom-up approach consensus to DNS Policy engagement with a focus on realizing the ICANN's multistakeholder PDP missions.

Additionally, I am also active within regional affiliations such as AFRINIC, ISOC-NG Chapter, Nigerian IGF MAG and AFRALO and currently in a couple of working groups within ICANN. 

You can learn more about my professional career here

Do you have any conflict(s) of interest?: No

How many Hours a week you are able to dedicate to the position: 5+ hours

Are you involved in any working Groups or PDP efforts, if so please state:

An Active member of the NCSG Policy Committee, more recently, I have accepted to serve as an alternate in SubPro IRT , Universal Acceptance Measurement WG, CWPG, AFRALO Hot Topics Working Group, IDN Policy Working Group, At-Large Social Media Working Group

Please find a link to more information about me [bit.ly]: https://bit.ly/calebogundele [bit.ly]

•Name:
Jean F. Queralt

•Affiliation:
Founder & CEO - The IO Foundation

•Position applied for:
NPOC Communications Chair

•Why you are running for the position?: 
I believe that I have the necessary qualities and capacities to bring the position's responsibilities to good term.

I look forward to work closely with the Membership Chair, and under the Chair's guidance, to ensure a good communication design and strategy that will keep our existing members informed as well as attract new ones.

My intended work will focus on the following objectives (which will be agreed with the Chair):
- Consolidate all existing NPOC communication channels and their access credentials
- Establish a regular flow of communication including NPOC's website, SocMed.
- Create a publicly available calendar of activities
- Explore auto transcript capabilities to NPOC meetings (and further distribution)
- Organize media campaigns to boost NPOC's exposure
- Establish procedures to reach some exposure on less utilized media (for instance, press releases)
- Synthetize all of the above in handbooks so that knowledge transfer is done smoothly across subsequent Communication Chairs.

•Do you have any conflict(s) of interest?:
None. Not running for any other position at ICANN.

•How many hours per week you are able to dedicate to the position:
3 hours (though will dedicated any extra needed hours to get agreed objectives done).

•Are you involved in any working Groups or PDP efforts, if so please state:
Slowly attempting to get involved with RSSAC in supporting tasks, member of RPM-IRT and supporting the CCWP-HR.

SOI: You can also find my up-to-date SOI below
https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=234422834

Greetings Colleagues,

Please find below my SOI for your support and votes.

•Name:
Gazzali Ibrahim Haruna

•Affiliation:
Founder & Executive Director- Africa Media and Information Technology Initiative (AFRIMITI)

•Position applied for:
NPOC Communications Chair

•Why you are running for the position?: 
To contribute my quota to achieve NPOC mandate. I believe i am the best candidate for this position. I am a Journalist and have over a decade of experience working on Media and Internet. 

I look forward to ensuring an effective Communication that will pass across seamless communication to members.

My intended work will focus on the following objectives (which will be agreed with the Chair):
-Ensure a seamless communication to members of NPOC and ensure all members are carried along.
- Ensure events dates are always scheduled to fit majority of members suitable time.
- Increase NPOC visibility and reach by conducting media campaigns.
-Improve external communication with stakeholders for effective collaboration and relationship management.
-Proper use of short videos to communicate to the public NPOC madate and any set objectives.
-Ensure the application of any other method deem best for communication for meeting NPOC set out objectives.

•Do you have any conflict(s) of interest?:
None. Not running for any other position at ICANN.

•How many hours per week you are able to dedicate to the position:
9 hours or as need to complete a specific task needed to be executed. 

•Are you involved in any working Groups or PDP efforts, if so please state:
Not currently involve with any working.