By Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has promoted chief operating officer (COO) Akram Atallah to the newly formed Generic Domains Division as president.
Under his new division, Atallah will be in charge of generic domain operations, domain name industry engagement and web services for the community.
According to ICANN president Fadi Chehade, the need for the new department is a result of a tremendous increase in “scale and responsibility” with the new generic top level domains (gTLD) programme one of the biggest changes the internet has seen in the past two decades.
Meanwhile Susanna Bennet, who has left Jazz Technologies, will take over as COO.
Bennet was also the vice president for human resources at Jazz.
Chehadé said: “Susanna has extensive knowledge of international operational infrastructure, governance and integration in culturally-diverse organizations.
“She will help improve ICANN’s agility, accountability and visibility, which I discussed during ICANN’s recent meeting in Beijing. She will help us mature and tweak our bottom-up, consensus-driven, multi-stakeholder model.”
Other changes have included the creation of a new position to lead Technical and Security operations while the vice president of stakeholder engagement for North Africa Jamie Hedlund will double as a special advisor to Chehade.
The changes will take effect from July 1.
