Technical Committee of the Board (BTC)

As Vice President of Technology at Akamai Technologies, Christian Kaufmann leads the Technology department, which is responsible for driving the technical evolution of the Akamai Edge platform, including a wide set of responsibilities like hardware engineering, data center architecture, network architecture and engineering, and software and systems development.

Christian has extensive experience in corporate governance, including hiring Chief Executive Officers and handling mergers and acquisitions. He has served on various other boards over the last 15 years, including at Internet Exchanges and the Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC).

Before joining Akamai, Christian worked in various technical and managerial roles at several Internet service providers and carriers, including Telia Sonera, Easynet, and Cable & Wireless.

Christian has a Master of Science in Advanced Networking from The Open University in the U.K. He also holds various technical certifications, including Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) and Juniper Networks Certified Internet Expert (JCNIE) certifications.

He was nominated to serve on the ICANN Board of Directors by the Address Supporting Organization (ASO) in 2022. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2025.

Harald Alvestrand was born in Norway in 1959, and graduated from the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH) in 1984. Since then, he became a leading figure in the Norwegian internet growth while working for UNINETT (the university network of Norway). Harald has also worked for Norsk Data, EDB Maxware and Cisco Systems. Since 2006, Harald has been working as an engineer for Google. He has participated on various projects during his time at Google, serving as the standards coordinator for the WebRTC project in his most recent one. He has been active in Internet standardization via the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) since 1991, and has written a number of RFCs, including RFC 1766, the first standard for language tags in Internet protocols. In the IETF, Harald has been an area director of the Applications area (1995-1998) and of the Operations & Management area (1998-1999; a member of the Internet Architecture Board (1999-2001), and served as chair of the IETF from 2001 to 2006. He was alternate chair of the ICANN DNSO General Assembly from December 1999 to April 2001, and was a member of the WIPO panel of experts on the DNS in 1998-1999. Harald is a former board member of NORID (the .no domain name registry), ICANN and the Unicode Consortium. He lives in Trondheim, Norway, is married, and has 3 children. Harald Alvestrand has been appointed as non-voting technical liaison to the ICANN Board by the IETF.

Alan Barrett holds a B.Sc.Eng. and M.Sc.Eng. from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (then called the University of Natal), Durban, South Africa. Alan was involved in setting up the first Internet connection for South African universities in 1990/1991. In 1993, he was a co-founder of the first commercial ISP in South Africa, then called TICSA, later Internet Africa and UUNET South Africa, where he remained until 1999. Alan then joined a small Internet firewall company, CEQURUX Technologies, where he remained until the company went out of business in 2007. After that, he worked as a software consultant. In 2015, Alan was appointed as CEO of AFRINIC, where he remained until 2019. Alan was a co-author of the 1997 proposal to create AFRINIC, serving on a steering committee tasked with creating AFRINIC, and was elected to the first AFRINIC Board in 2004, where he served until 2009. He was appointed by the AFRINIC Board to the Number Resource Organization Number Council (NRO NC) / Address Supporting Organization Address Council (ASO AC), from 2004 to 2014. During part of the IANA stewardship transition, from 2015 to 2016, he served in the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG), as an appointee of the NRO. Alan was selected by the ASO to serve on the ICANN Board in 2021. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2024.

Chris Buckridge is an independent consultant, analyst, and commentator in the Internet governance and digital policy space. He worked for more than two decades with Regional Internet Registries, starting with the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre in 2003, before joining the Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) in 2006. During his tenure at the RIPE NCC, he helped develop the organization's engagement in public policy and Internet governance, working closely with institutions including the International Telecommunication Union, the OECD, and the United Nations.

In 2015, Chris served a member of the Australian government delegation to the WSIS+10 review. Since 2016, he has served as a member of the EuroDIG Association Board, and has been actively engaged in national and regional Internet governance initiatives across the RIPE NCC service region (Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia) and beyond. In 2021, he was appointed to the Multistakeholder Advisory Group or MAG of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum, where he will complete his third and final one-year term in 2024. Chris holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland in Australia.

Chris was selected in 2023 by the Generic Names Supporting Organization to serve a three-year term on the ICANN Board of Directors in 2023. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2026.

Nicolas "Nico" G. Caballero is a Data Analyst and ERP Software and Domain Name System (DNS) expert, serving as an ICT Adviser at Paraguay's Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies (MITIC). He is also currently serving as President of Centro de Emprendimiento e Internet de América Latina y el Caribe (CEILAC) DNS Center in Asuncion. Nico was a direct ICT Advisor for the office of the President of Paraguay, and as such he coordinated: the demonopolization of Internet service in Paraguay; the establishment of the Digital TV Standard (ISDB-Tb); the creation of the ICT Ministry, SENATICS; and the team that drafted the first Paraguayan civil satellite program, which in turn, led to the establishment of the Paraguayan space agency.

Nico was the founder of the Internet Society (ISOC) Paraguay Chapter and served as its first President. He was also the first Paraguayan GAC Representative. In parallel, he served as the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Regional Initiative Representative in the country, where he organized the first IGF meeting in 2014. Nico was further responsible for the extensive capacity- building work carried out by the ICT Ministry, in particular the Memorandum of Understanding with ICANN in 2016–2017. He coordinated the establishment of the CEILAC DNS Center, as a cooperation agreement between SENATICS, the Latin American and Caribbean Country Code Top-Level Domain Association, and ICANN, which remained operative within the structure of MITIC.

Nico was also responsible for organizing key IT events in Paraguay: the ICANN DNS Roadshow,

ISOC Chapter events, and Chapter projects aimed at developing connectivity in rural areas, providing digital training and IT infrastructure to high schools, and providing Internet connection, e-commerce tools and digital training for Native Indigenous people in remote areas. In 2017, he moved to the private sector, and in 2022 resumed his role as the Paraguay GAC Representative at ICANN74 in The Hague, Netherlands. At ICANN76 in Kuala Lumpur, Nico was elected GAC Chair, marking the first time a Latin American representative has held the position.

Nico studied English at Pittsburgh State University in Kansas, USA; Computer Science at Universidad Autonoma de Asuncion in Paraguay; and E-Government at Konkuk University in Seoul, Republic of Korea. He also holds an Electric Car Technologies Diploma from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

He is fluent in Spanish, English and Portuguese, and also speaks French and Italian. Nico loves rugby, plays classical guitar, and is also a 4th Degree Black Belt in Taekwon-Do.

Edmon Chung is a social innovator and entrepreneur. Edmon currently serves as the CEO of DotAsia Organisation, serves on the Executive Committee of Internet Society Hong Kong (ISOC HK), the Board of Make a Difference (MaD) Institute, and heads the secretariat for the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF). Edmon served also on the founding board of the Internet Governance Forum Support Association (IGFSA), continues to support its secretariat, cofounded the annual Hong Kong Kids International Film Festival (KIFF.Asia), and participates extensively on Internet governance and social innovation matters. Edmon is an inventor of patents of internationalized domain names (IDN) and email addresses technologies, and has served on many global IDN related technical and policy groups, that made possible the introduction of multilingual domain names and email addresses on the Internet. Edmon won the Most Innovative Award in the Chinese Canadian Entrepreneurship Award in 2001. In 2000, Edmon was selected by The Globe and Mail as one of the Young Canadian Leaders.

Between 2006 and 2010, Edmon served on the ICANN Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council, between 2010 and 2012 on the ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC), and between 2006 and 2011, as an elected member of the Elections Committee of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in the Information Technology Subsector. Edmon has a Bachelor of Applied Science and Master of Engineering from the University of Toronto. He was nominated to serve on the ICANN Board by the Nominating Committee in 2021. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2024.

Dr. James Galvin has over three decades of experience in secure and robust operations in all aspects of networking and the life cycle of a domain name. He currently serves as Donuts, Inc. Director of Strategic Relationships and Technical Standards, applying this experience to the development of technical standards and policies in support of strategic initiatives to advance secure and robust operations. James began his career in 1989 developing Internet Standards in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for secure email, secure network management, and DNS security, which are still applicable and in use today. He continues to be an active participant in the IETF where he currently serves as Co-Chair of the Registration Extensions Protocols Working Group, the working group currently responsible for all Internet Standards related to the operation of domain name registration services and the protocol interactions between registries and registrars. He has been part of ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) since 2002, and served as its Vice Chair for seven years until December 2017. He has served the ICANN community as chair of various technical expert working groups and has engaged in multiple PDPs. He is currently active in the Registry Stakeholder Group DNS Abuse Working Group, the contracted party’s technical operations working group (CPH TechOps), and the CPH RDAP working group. James is a Pioneering Member of the Internet Society, and served as its Vice President of Chapters and Individuals from 2002 until 2005. He has been a member of both the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) since the early 1980s. James was appointed to serve as the SSAC’s non-voting liaison to the ICANN Board on 28 October 2021.

Wes Hardaker is a Senior Computer Scientist at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute and is responsible for overseeing teams to develop and execute research ideas. He is principally responsible for the operation and management of the Internet’s Internet’s b.root-servers.net [b.root-servers.net] domain name system critical infrastructure.  His research focuses on enhancing the DNS, network management, routing and other Internet protocols, and studying malicious actor behaviors through intrusion detection. Wes has been actively participating in the Internet Engineering Task Force open standards body that documents Internet protocols for roughly 25 years, and he currently sits on the Internet Architecture Board. Within ICANN, Wes is the principal representative for b.root-servers.net [b.root-servers.net] in the Root Server System Advisory Committee.

Wes was appointed to serve as the RSSAC’s non-voting liaison to the ICANN Board beginning in September 2022.

Patricio Poblete was born in Chile in 1952 and obtained a degree in Mathematical Engineering from the University of Chile, and a M.Math. and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo, Canada. In 1975, he was one of the founders of the first Department of Computer Science in Chile, at the University of Chile, where he is currently a Full Professor. He has a long list of scientific publications, most of them in the fields of Data Structures and Analysis of Algorithms. He is also an Internet pioneer in his country, having started the first email network connecting Chilean universities to the world, and later participating in the connection of Chile to the Internet. Since 1987, the Department of Computer Science of the University of Chile took on the responsibility of managing the registry for .CL, the domain name registry for the Republic of Chile. Over the years, this grew and became NIC Chile, one of the oldest and largest registries in Latin America. Patricio has led NIC Chile since its founding. As representative of NIC Chile, Patricio participated in the International Forum of the White Paper (IFWP) process that led to the creation of ICANN, then served as a member of the Names Council of the Domain Names Supporting Organization (DNSO), until it split into the GNSO and the ccNSO. For many years he was a member and vice-chair of the ccNSO Council, and has participated in various working groups, notably the Framework of Interpretation (FoI), the ccPDP Retirement WG and the Meetings Program Standing Committee (MPC). In 2017 he received the ICANN Multistakeholder Ethos Award, jointly with his colleague Hiro Hotta. On the regional area, he was one of the founders of LACTLD, the Latin American and Caribbean ccTLDs Organization. In parallel with his work with NIC Chile and with the ICANN community, Patricio is a leading engineering educator in Chile, and served as director of the School of Engineering and Science of the University of Chile for 14 years. He has received many awards for his work in the field of Engineering Education and he has recently been selected as a member of the Chilean Academy of Engineering. He was selected to serve on the ICANN Board by the ccNSO for the term 2020-2023 and renewed for the term 2024-2026.