Maria Kolesnikova, chief analyst at the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, has been selected to be Chair of the Communications Working Group of the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) for 2021. The Communications Working Group will oversee the communications strategy and its implementation in conjunction with other UASG groups.
Maria Kolesnikova has been actively involved in UASG activities and in solving problems of universal acceptance of domain names and email addresses for several years. She heads the project Поддерживаю.РФ, which was launched in 2020 and is dedicated to the development of an ecosystem for supporting domain names and email addresses in national languages, primarily in the Cyrillic top-level domain .РФ.
In 2019, Maria initiated the creation of the Universal Acceptance Regional Coordination Group for the CIS and Eastern Europe. At the moment, the group includes experts from seven countries (Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia and Latvia), in which 12 IDNs are delegated (.РФ, .МОСКВА, .ДЕТИ, .SU, .հայ , .БЕЛ, .УКР, .UA, .გე, .СРБ, .RS and .LV). Since the end of 2019, the group has had the status of the UASG Local Initiative in the CIS and Eastern Europe.
“I would like to thank my colleagues from the Communications Working Group and the UASG leadership for their trust and the opportunity to apply my professional experience and skills in the field of universal acceptance in the interests of the community. UASG is a global center of expertise on the implementation of universal acceptance, therefore, further development of interaction and communication mechanisms both within the UASG international community and with key stakeholders is a prerequisite for achieving the goals set for 2021,” said Maria Kolesnikova.
