60th ICANN meeting, the final forum on the year, is taking place now in Abu Dhabi, the capital of UAE. Several major personnel changes in the management of the corporation will be implemented or formalized at the meeting. For example, tomorrow Cherine Chalaby will be officially elected as ICANN chair. The decision that he will replace Steve Crocker was made back in September during a working meeting of the board in Montevideo (Uruguay).
Yesterday the new chair of another important ICANN structure – Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) – was elected. Thomas Schneider, representative of Switzerland, who held this post previously, notified GAC back in spring that he would be resigning before the end of the year. Manal Ismail has been elected the new chair of ICANN’s GAC. She represents Egypt in GAC and is the director of international technical coordination at Egypt’s National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA).
Domain Incite draws attention to the fact that for the first time in history of ICANN representatives of the same country hold two such important positions. However, it should be noted that Cherine Chalaby also has British citizenship and has for a long time been living in the United States.
