Internet Society Announces New Members to Board of Trustees

WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Internet Society, a global nonprofit organization that promotes the development and use of an open, globally connected, secure and trustworthy Internet, today announced that five new members have been elected to its Board of Trustees.

The Internet Society Board of Trustees is elected or appointed by Chapters, Organization Members, and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The results of the 2020 Board elections held earlier this year are:

• Maimouna Diop was elected by Chapters. She is head of Public Relations for SONATEL, the largest telecommunications company in Senegal. Prior to that, Maimouna was Director of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) at the Ministry of ICT in Senegal.
• Ted Hardie, was elected by Organization Members. He works in Internet architecture and evolution at Google where he puts networks, protocols, and people together in new ways. Ted first worked in the Internet field in 1988 as part of the operations staff of the SRI NIC. He later became the technical lead for the NASA NIC, part of the NASA Science Internet project.
• George Sadowsky was elected by Chapters. He has helped develop and deploy Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in more than 50 developing countries. As Executive Director of the Global Internet Policy Initiative, he worked on Internet policy reform projects around the world.
• Laura Thomson was appointed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). She is currently VP of Engineering at Fastly, a cloud computing services provider. Prior to that, Laura spent more than a decade at Mozilla in a variety of engineering leadership roles.
• Heather West was appointed by the Board to fill a vacancy left by resignation of Mieke van Heesewijk earlier this year. She is currently head of Public Policy for the Americas at Mozilla Corporation. Prior to that, Heather was head of Public Policy at Cloudflare. She also served as a global and Federal privacy and security issue expert at Google.

The term of office for Maimouna Diop, Laura Thomson, Ted Hardie and George Sadowsky will be three years commencing with the 2020 Annual General Meeting held from 1-2, August 2020. Heather West will serve a one-year term.

The Internet Society Board of Trustees provides strategic direction in support of the organization’s mission of preserving an open, globally connected, and secure Internet. More information, including biographical details of all Board members and details of the Board selection process, is available at https://www.internetsociety.org/board-of-trustees/.

The current members of the Internet Society Board of Trustees are:

• Walid Al-Saqaf, Senior Lecturer at Södertörn University in Stockholm
• Richard Barnes, Chief Security Architect for Collaboration at Cisco
• Gonzalo Camarillo, Head of Data/IT standardization at Ericsson
• Olga Cavalli, Co-founder and Academic Director, South School on Internet Governance
• Maimouna Diop, Head of Public Relations, SONATEL
• Mike Godwin, Attorney and author and previous general counsel for Wikimedia Foundation
• Ted Hardie, Internet architecture and evolution at Google
• John Levine, President of CAUCE North America, the leading grass roots anti-online-abuse organization, and author of The Internet for Dummies.
• Robert Pepper, Head of Global Connectivity Policy and Planning, Facebook
• George Sadowsky, previously Executive Director of the Global Internet Policy Initiative
• Andrew Sullivan, President and CEO of the Internet Society; serves as a non-voting Trustee
• Laura Thomson, VP of Engineering at Fastly
• Heather West, Head of Public Policy for the Americas at Mozilla Corporation.

About the Internet Society

Founded in 1992 by Internet pioneers, the Internet Society (ISOC) is a global non-profit organization working to ensure the Internet remains a force for good for everyone. Through its community of members, special interest groups, and 130+ chapters around the world, the organization defends and promotes Internet policies, standards, and protocols that keep the Internet open, globally-connected, and secure. For more information, please visit: internetsociety.org.

Contacts

Media:
Allesandra deSantillana

Internet Society

desantillana@isoc.org