Fadi Chehadé

Country:	USA
LinkedIn:	[fadichehade Fadi Chehadé]

Fadi Chehadé is the incoming President and CEO of ICANN. He is set to take over from the Interim CEO Akram Atallah on or before October 1, 2012.

Fadi attended ICANN 44 in Prague, Czech Republic, and gave a speech during the Opening Ceremony.

ICANN

CEO Search

Fadi Chehadé was selected as CEO through the work of an ICANN CEO Search Committee. The topic of CEO succession planning was first discussed at an Board meeting on 17 September 2011, where they directed the Board Governance Committee to appoint members to a CEO Search Process Management Work Committee. In January 2012, ICANN began openly advertising the position in places such as The Economist. It was reported on February 21st, several days after the application period ended, that Odgers Berndtson had collected more than 100 applications for the position, with candidates coming in from community referrals, the ad in The Economist, and the firm's outreach. The firm then interviewed 27 of these applicants and submitted the results to the CEO Search Committee. The Committee proceeded to interview 16 of these candidates via teleconference, and planned to interview a subset of this group face to face. Following the face to face interviews, the Committee planned to present a smaller subset for intensive interviewing by the ICANN Board. The Committee anticipated that the Board would announce its final decision by mid-April. By late March, the pool was narrowed down to six applicants and by the beginning of April, the pool had been narrowed to four, none of which had any hands-on experience with ICANN.

It was announced at ICANN 44 on Friday, June 22nd, that the new CEO would be Fadi Chehade,

ICANN 44 Prague

Mr. Chehadé first introduced himself when he was still the "incoming" CEO at ICANN 44 in Prague. That meeting marked the last conference of outgoing CEO Rod Beckstrom, who officially left the organization a few days later. The ICANN 44 was also adressed by interim CEO Akram Atallah, who mostly promised to steer the organization, focusing on new gTLDs, and prepare it for Mr. Chehadé without creating new disturbances or distractions. Mr. Chehadé stresses that he would asses the needs of ICANN from the outside over the coming months so that he can facilitate genuine consensus within the ICANN community. He promised to manage ICANN Staff with a very decision-driven mindset. He stressed two observations he had already made; the first is that ICANN is an international organization, and that it must strive to be more international. The second observation was that all his work will be mute if the organization does not deliver "excellence." At the close of his speech he made 3 pledges, they are:

1. "I will listen"
2. "I will be very transparent".."super transparent"..."extra transparent"
3. "I will make all my decisions for the public interest"

Career History

Chehadé has more than 25 years of experience in founding and leading progressive Internet businesses. He served most recently as the CEO of Vocado (October 2010 - October 2012), a firm providing cloud-based software to the administrations of educational institutions. Prior, he was CEO of CoreObjects Software (April 2009 – August 2010), a leader in new product software development services for both large and growing companies. In his time there, he oversaw the company's growth to more than 400 employees and its acquisition by Symphony Services. From February 2006 until March 2009, Fadi served as the General Manager of IBM's Global Technology Services in the Middle East and North Africa Department, following IBM's acquisition of his company, Viacore Inc. He founded Viacore, a B2B process integration hub, in February, 2000. From February 1998 until February 2000, he served as the Founder and CEO of RosettaNet, a non-profit multi-stakeholder company that lead major international corporations including IBM, Microsoft, HP, Nokia, and Oracle, to collaborate on B2B standards. From July 1996 until February 1998, Chehadé served as the Vice President of Ingram Micro. In 1988, he founded Connectica Inc. and served as its CEO for 8 years. He began his career as a Systems Engineer at AT&T's Bell Labs.

Education

Chehadé received his M.S. in Engineering Management from Stanford University in 1986 and his B.S. in Computer Science from Polytechnic University in 1985. He speaks English, Arabic, French, and Italian.

Personal Background

As Mr. Chehadé explains in his first speech to an ICANN conference, he was born in Beirut of Egyptian parents who had lived in various parts of the world before they settled in Lebanon. His family is from a Coptic Christian minority in Egypt. In Beirut, he attended a French Christian school, speaking French at school and Arabic afterwards, until at the age of 13 his father decided to send him to Damascus due to violent tensions and the Lebanese civil war. He arrived in the U.S. at the age of 18 without knowing any English; his first job, which he retained for 7 months, was peeling onions. During this time he was also attending school to learn English. Later, his tuition at Stanford was covered by a work-study agreement with his employer, AT&T.

Videos

<videoflash>rjt2mCinmbg</videoflash>