Fadi Chehadé

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Fadi Chehadé is the current President and CEO of ICANN. He was originally set to take over from the Interim CEO Akram Atallah on October 1, 2012, but he started the position two weeks early, on September 14.

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 to replace Rod Beckstrom. 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"

Assuming the CEO Position

ICANN announced on September, 14, 2012 that Mr. Chehadé has officially stepped into his role as CEO, which it pointed out was 2 weeks ahead of the deadline of October 1. Along with this announcement came the news that Mr. Chehadé had already made arrangements to restructure the organization in several ways, including who reports directly to him and the creation of new executive positions.

• Akram Atallah, interim CEO is returning to his role as COO, with expanded responsibilities, which include oversight of Registry and Registrar Services, the new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program, and security and other important activities.
• Tarek Kamel, who previously lead the development of ICANN's African strategy as a Senior Advisor to the President, was appointed to the new role of Senior Advisor for Government Affairs, leading all aspects of Government Engagement. He was on the short list of consideration for the ICANN CEO position, which Mr. Chehadé went on to fill. Mr. Kamel will be based in Europe.
• Sally Costerton, was a new hire and was most recently CEO of Hill & Knowlton Public Relations for Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Her new role at ICANN is Head of Stakeholder Relations, which is a role that will incorporate the communications function. She was also on the short list for ICANN CEO. Ms. Costerton will be based in Europe.

All three of these executives are to report directly to Mr. Chehadé. Other executives to report directly to the CEO include: Kurt Pritz, who will assume the role of Chief of Strategy, leaving the role of Senior Vice President; John Jeffrey, General Counsel and Secretary of the ICANN Board; David Olive, Vice President of Policy; Maguy Serad, is to assume the position of VP of Contractual Compliance, being promoted from Senior Director of Contractual Compliance, with her department reporting directly to the CEO as well.

ICANN 45 in Toronto

CEO Chehadé became personally involved in a number of issues at or around ICANN 45. He used the opening ceremony as an hour-long "working" session, wherein he outlined his progress and vision on the biggest issues facing ICANN. He noted that "ICANN cannot continue operating like a start-up", that the organization needed to stop managing defensively, that progress must be seen on long-standing problems such as Whois, and he unveiled a new ICANN online portal, MyICANN. He said in an interview that he would become personally involved in the discussion on the Registrar Accreditation Agreement and the Trademark Clearinghouse.

In an open letter to the community, Chehadé shared a 12-point plan which can be seen here of what he hopes to accomplish between ICANN 45 in Toronto and ICANN 46 in Beijing 2013. Among others issues to be addressed, Chehadé lists the following as top priorities:

1. "Operational excellence" under his new leadership as ICANN's "highest priority";
2. ICANN's delivery "on every aspect of the new gTLD program launch next year" through the creation of a new gTLD servies department and the implementation of Trademark Clearing House;
3. A community effort to resolve longstanding issues of the Whois debate;
4. A plan to "reach consensus on a solid and enforceable Registrar Accreditation Agreement that is fair and balanced."

Trademark Protections

Senators Patrick Leahy and Chuck Grassley and Congressional Representatives Lamar Smith and John Conyers issued an August 7 letter critizing ICANN's approach to new gTLDs. They criticized ICANN's level of New GTLD outreach, stating that "many members of the public outside the ICANN community are unaware that the New gTLD program is underway" and go on to note that those who are aware are not given adequate time and information to participate. The letter also highlighted demands from IP interests that ICANN systematically offer stronger rights protection mechanisms on the new gTLDs, such as a permanent Trademark Clearinghouse service rather than the existing policy, which only required the Clearinghouse be available the first sixty days after a registry launches.

On September 19, 2012, Chehadé sent a letter in return, where he said explained that the 60-day period was reached through a "multi-year, extensive process with the ICANN community" and therefore would not be in ICANN's power to unilaterally extend. He also noted that the Trademark Clearinghouse is "intended to be a repository for existing legal rights, and not an adjudicator of such rights or creator of new rights. Extending the protections offered through the Trademark Clearinghouse to any form of name (such as the mark + generic term suggested in your letter) would potentially expand rights beyond those granted under trademark law and put the Clearinghouse in the role of making determinations as to the scope of particular rights."

In early November 2012, Chehade invited a group of business, IP, and noncommercial users, along with registrar and registry stakeholder groups, to discuss Clearinghouse-related issues. Resolutions and decisions for ICANN include::

1. Registration: How registration recording and verification are addressed

• Agreeing to map out trademark submission and verification components
• Developing a new system to offer timely and accurate information on new gTLD launches
• Implementing seminars between implementers and various users

1. Sunrise Management: How to use Sunrise data files and offer flexibility for rights holders

• Offering model in which Clearinghouse data can be provided securely to rights holders for early sunrise registration
• Giving details on the degree of "matching" between a Clearinghouse record and a domain name's Whois data.

1. Claims Management: How new gTLDs registries and registrars will facilitate Clearinghouse records during the registration process

• Agreeing to hybrid system of decentralized and centralized system for Trademark Claims
• Offering trademark claims service for at least first 60 days of general registration and all new gTLD registries must offer a minimum 30-day sunrise period
• Decided not to implement measures to address the potential mining of the Clearinghouse database for purposes not related to rights protection, on the basis that most controls would be ineffective

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

Mr. Chehadé 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

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