Risk Committee of the Board (BRC)

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.

Alan Barrett holds a B.Sc.Eng. and M.Sc.Eng. from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (then called the University of Natal), Durban, South Africa. Alan was involved in setting up the first Internet connection for South African universities in 1990/1991. In 1993, he was a co-founder of the first commercial ISP in South Africa, then called TICSA, later Internet Africa and UUNET South Africa, where he remained until 1999. Alan then joined a small Internet firewall company, CEQURUX Technologies, where he remained until the company went out of business in 2007. After that, he worked as a software consultant. In 2015, Alan was appointed as CEO of AFRINIC, where he remained until 2019. Alan was a co-author of the 1997 proposal to create AFRINIC, serving on a steering committee tasked with creating AFRINIC, and was elected to the first AFRINIC Board in 2004, where he served until 2009. He was appointed by the AFRINIC Board to the Number Resource Organization Number Council (NRO NC) / Address Supporting Organization Address Council (ASO AC), from 2004 to 2014. During part of the IANA stewardship transition, from 2015 to 2016, he served in the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG), as an appointee of the NRO. Alan was selected by the ASO to serve on the ICANN Board in 2021. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2024.

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.

Dr. James Galvin has over three decades of experience in secure and robust operations in all aspects of networking and the life cycle of a domain name. He currently serves as Identity Digital, Inc. Director of Strategic Relationships, applying this experience to the development of technical standards and policies in support of strategic initiatives to advance secure and robust operations. James began his career in 1989 developing Internet Standards in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for secure email, secure network management, and DNS security, which are still applicable and in use today. He continues to be an active participant in the IETF where he currently serves as Co-Chair of the Registration Extensions Protocols Working Group, the working group currently responsible for all Internet Standards related to the operation of domain name registration services and the protocol interactions between registries and registrars. He has been part of ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) since 2002, and served as its Vice Chair for seven years until December 2017. He has served the ICANN community as chair of various technical expert working groups and has engaged in multiple PDPs. He is currently active in the Registry Stakeholder Group DNS Abuse Working Group, the contracted party’s technical operations working group (CPH TechOps), and the CPH RDAP working group. James is a Pioneering Member of the Internet Society, and served as its Vice President of Chapters and Individuals from 2002 until 2005. He has been a member of both the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) since the early 1980s. James was appointed to serve as the SSAC’s non-voting liaison to the ICANN Board on 28 October 2021.

Byron Holland (MBA, ICD.D) has been the President and CEO of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) since 2008. An expert in Internet governance and a seasoned entrepreneur, he has C-level experience in private and not-for-profit sectors. Under Byron’s leadership, CIRA has evolved from a single-service registry to a globally recognized, multi-product, commercial not-for-profit. Now one of the leading country code top level domains (ccTLDs) in the world, CIRA manages over 3.4 million domains, with more than 30% of the world’s TLDs using its domain name system (DNS) services. Byron represents CIRA internationally in global policy work and has played a pivotal role in shaping key Internet governance decisions, holding prominent leadership positions within the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), including Chair of the Customer Standing Committee, and serving as both Chair and Vice Chair of the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO). He also served on the nominations committee for the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) from 2019-2022. Byron currently sits on the Board of Directors as Vice Chair of TorIX, Canada’s largest internet exchange point and as Treasurer of the Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries. The ccNSO selected Byron in March 2025 to serve on the ICANN Board. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2027.

With his regular participation in both the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and ICANN, David has sought to bring together policy and technology in a pragmatic way.

David started his career on the Internet at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the mid-1980s, where he acquired the nickname "tale" by which is he known by many in the industry. He soon became involved with Usenet governance, and served for nearly a decade as the caretaker of the Usenet newsgroup creation process. He co-authored the O'Reilly book "Managing Usenet" with Henry Spencer.

Following his stint at UUNET as the Usenet newsmaster and FTP archive maintainer, David joined the Internet Software Consortium (ISC) in 1997 where he was a member of the team that rewrote the popular DNS server BIND and started participating in the IETF.

He moved with several of his coworkers to the ISC spinoff company, Nominum. At Nominum, David became deeply involved in Internationalized Domain Name development, and also attended his first ICANN meeting.

David joined Akamai Technologies in 2005 and spent 13 years as a senior developer and architect on the proprietary nameserver that powers Akamai's content delivery network. In 2010, he was selected as one of the Trusted Community Representatives for the DNNSEC Root Key. He was a past board member of DNS-OARC and currently is a board member of CVFiber, which focuses on bringing fast, reliable, and locally managed Internet to north central Vermont.

David lives with his wife, Sarah, and twins, Jack and Abby, in the mountains near Montpelier, Vermont.

David was appointed to serve as the IETF’s non-voting liaison to the ICANN Board on 14 November 2024.

Ambassador (ret.) Miriam Sapiro is a non-resident Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Throughout her career, Miriam has worked successfully with governments and international organizations around the world to address complex challenges at the intersection of international and domestic policy. She has served in senior roles in the U.S. government, including at the National Security Council (NSC), the State Department, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and in the private sector and NGO community. Upon confirmation by the U.S. Senate with the rank of Ambassador, Miriam was Deputy and then Acting U.S. Trade Representative, leading negotiations and enforcement to improve U.S. competitiveness, secure labor and environmental rights, and advance innovation. She also served on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).

Miriam’s government experience spans Democratic and Republican administrations and includes working in the White House at the NSC as Special Assistant to the President and Counselor for Southeast European Stabilization and Reconstruction, and as Director of European affairs. She began her career at the State Department as an international lawyer before joining the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff. In that role, she helped negotiate the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the war in Bosnia.

In addition to ICANN, Miriam is on the board of directors of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), which strengthens democracy by supporting fair and transparent elections around the world. She has served as the inaugural Polis distinguished fellow at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, the chief executive officer and president of the NGO alliance InterAction, and a member of the Supervisory Board of Lufthansa. She also co-led the Washington, DC offices of two strategic communications firms, Finsbury and Sard Verbinnen.

Miriam has been involved in the ICANN community since 2001, reflecting a deep familiarity with and commitment to ICANN’s mission and preserving the multistakeholder model. She has worked on issues ranging from country code top level domain (ccTLD) redelegation requirements to evaluation of new generic top level domains (gTLDs) and further expansion of the domain name system (DNS). She was an active participant in the inaugural Internet Governance Forum in support of ICANN’s continued independence and later worked to support the milestone of transferring stewardship of the IANA functions from the U.S. Department of Commerce to the global Internet community.

Miriam received her BA from Williams College and JD from the NYU School of Law, and she was a Rotary fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University.

Miriam was selected in 2024 to serve on the ICANN Board of Directors by the Nominating Committee for a three-year term. Her term will expire at the Annual General Meeting 2027.