Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee (BAMC)

Patricio Poblete was born in Chile in 1952 and obtained a degree in Mathematical Engineering from the University of Chile, and a M.Math. and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo, Canada. In 1975, he was one of the founders of the first Department of Computer Science in Chile, at the University of Chile, where he is currently a Full Professor. He has a long list of scientific publications, most of them in the fields of Data Structures and Analysis of Algorithms. He is also an Internet pioneer in his country, having started the first email network connecting Chilean universities to the world, and later participating in the connection of Chile to the Internet. Since 1987, the Department of Computer Science of the University of Chile took on the responsibility of managing the registry for .CL, the domain name registry for the Republic of Chile. Over the years, this grew and became NIC Chile, one of the oldest and largest registries in Latin America. Patricio has led NIC Chile since its founding. As representative of NIC Chile, Patricio participated in the International Forum of the White Paper (IFWP) process that led to the creation of ICANN, then served as a member of the Names Council of the Domain Names Supporting Organization (DNSO), until it split into the GNSO and the ccNSO. For many years he was a member and vice-chair of the ccNSO Council, and has participated in various working groups, notably the Framework of Interpretation (FoI), the ccPDP Retirement WG and the Meetings Program Standing Committee (MPC). In 2017 he received the ICANN Multistakeholder Ethos Award, jointly with his colleague Hiro Hotta. On the regional area, he was one of the founders of LACTLD, the Latin American and Caribbean ccTLDs Organization. In parallel with his work with NIC Chile and with the ICANN community, Patricio is a leading engineering educator in Chile, and served as director of the School of Engineering and Science of the University of Chile for 14 years. He has received many awards for his work in the field of Engineering Education and he has recently been selected as a member of the Chilean Academy of Engineering. He was selected to serve on the ICANN Board by the ccNSO for the term 2020-2023 and renewed for the term 2024-2026.

Chris Buckridge is an independent consultant, analyst, and commentator in the Internet governance and digital policy space. He worked for more than two decades with Regional Internet Registries, starting with the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre in 2003, before joining the Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) in 2006. During his tenure at the RIPE NCC, he helped develop the organization's engagement in public policy and Internet governance, working closely with institutions including the International Telecommunication Union, the OECD, and the United Nations.

In 2015, Chris served a member of the Australian government delegation to the WSIS+10 review. Since 2016, he has served as a member of the EuroDIG Association Board, and has been actively engaged in national and regional Internet governance initiatives across the RIPE NCC service region (Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia) and beyond. In 2021, he was appointed to the Multistakeholder Advisory Group or MAG of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum, where he will complete his third and final one-year term in 2024. Chris holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland in Australia.

Chris was selected in 2023 by the Generic Names Supporting Organization to serve a three-year term on the ICANN Board of Directors in 2023. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2026.

Sarah Deutsch is a practicing attorney with considerable experience on Internet policy and related legal issues. Sarah worked for over 23 years at Verizon Communications as Vice President and Deputy General Counsel in its Legal Department. She managed the company’s global intellectual property practice and team of legal and technical personnel responsible for trademarks, domain names, copyrights, patent licensing and portfolio management and unfair competition issues. Her responsibilities included federal, state and international matters involving counseling, litigation, and Internet policy, including close coordination with Verizon’s technical teams and engineers.

Sarah has served as a subject matter expert in Verizon’s Legal Department on Internet issues since the mid 1990s. She has extensive experience in IP policy, online liability issues, privacy, cyber-security and consumer protection issues and related advocacy before the US Congress, federal agencies, state legislatures, and global bodies including WIPO, OECD, and other legislative and regulatory bodies. Sarah was the first attorney to oversee Verizon’s Privacy Office, including managing its Chief Privacy Officer, privacy attorneys and staff. She was a Lecturer of Law at Harvard Law School, teaching a class in online privacy in 2019.

Sarah was one of five negotiators for the U.S. telecommunications industry in the negotiations that led to the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. She also served as a Private Sector Advisor to U.S. Delegation to the WIPO Copyright Treaties and to the G8 Cybercrime Conference. Sarah was the 2014 recipient of the Managing IP In-House Counsel Award at the American Women in Business Law Awards. In 2009, she received the Public Knowledge President’s Award for Extraordinary Dedication to Protecting the Free Flow of Information Over the Internet.

Sarah has been involved in ICANN issues since its inception, working on numerous issues over the years with the Business Constituency and the IPC. She has also coordinated closely with the ISPCP. Sarah served as the Business Constituency’s Commercial Stakeholder Group representative, and also represented the BC on the Nominating Committee. She currently serves on the Board of the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, the nonprofit Edgemoor Research Institute and the nonprofit National Center for Health Research.

Prior to joining Verizon, Sarah was an associate in the law firm of Morgan, Lewis Bockius. She holds a J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law and a B.A. from Emory University. She was nominated to serve on the ICANN Board by the Nominating Committee in 2017. Her term will expire at the Annual General Meeting 2026.

Greg DiBiase is an attorney specializing in domain name industry issues. For the last nine years, Greg has served as senior corporate counsel for Amazon, where he helped build out Amazon Web Services’ domain registrar and helps to manage Amazon’s portfolio of internally-owned domain names. Before that, Greg served as a compliance manager for the Endurance family of registrars (now operated by Newfold Digital) and ICANN. Before going to law school, Greg sold billboards in Los Angeles.

Greg has been involved in ICANN policymaking since 2012. He has held several roles within ICANN’s Registrar Stakeholder Group and spent six years as the registrar representative on the Generic Names Support Organization (GNSO) Council. Most recently, he served as Chair of the GNSO Council, leading the management of ICANN’s policy development process.

Greg was selected in 2025 to serve on the ICANN Board of Directors as ICANN’s Contracted Parties House representative for a three-year term. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting 2028.

Wes Hardaker is a Senior Computer Scientist at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute and is responsible for overseeing teams to develop and execute research ideas. He is principally responsible for the operation and management of the Internet’s Internet’s b.root-servers.net [b.root-servers.net] domain name system critical infrastructure.  His research focuses on enhancing the DNS, network management, routing and other Internet protocols, and studying malicious actor behaviors through intrusion detection. Wes has been actively participating in the Internet Engineering Task Force open standards body that documents Internet protocols for roughly 25 years, and he currently sits on the Internet Architecture Board. Within ICANN, Wes is the principal representative for b.root-servers.net [b.root-servers.net] in the Root Server System Advisory Committee.

Wes was appointed to serve as the RSSAC’s non-voting liaison to the ICANN Board beginning in September 2022.

León Sánchez is an intellectual property attorney graduated from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City. He also completed postgraduate studies in intellectual property at the UNAM and Internet Law at Harvard Law School. Since 2006 he has been a partner at Fulton & Fulton, a law firm specialized in intellectual property and IT law based in Mexico City, and is Head of the Intellectual Property division. Mr. Sanchez also serves on the Board of Directors for Trustnet Corporate Group, ISDI Mexico and several other non-for-profit organizations in Mexico. Since 2008 Mr. Sanchez is professor of Intellectual Property at the UNAM Law School. He has been an advisor to different Government bodies, including the Digital Strategy Coordination Office of the Mexican Presidency, the Special Commission on Digital Agenda and IT of the Mexican House of Representatives and the Science and Technology Commission of the Mexican Senate. He drafted the Internet Users Rights Protection Act for Mexico and has been very active on issues like ACTA, SOPA, TPPA and other local initiatives of the same kind, always advocating to defend users’ and creators’ rights in order to achieve a balance between regulation and freedom. Mr. Sanchez has served in ICANN as the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) Vice-Chair and Co-Chair of the Cross Community Working Group (CCWG) on Accountability where he has been deeply involved with the IANA Stewardship transition process. Mr. Sanchez was elected by the At-Large community to be its designated Director on the ICANN Board of Directors from 2017 to 2020. He was elected by the At-Large community of individual Internet users worldwide to serve as an ICANN Board Director for a three-year term (November 2017 - November 2020).