Audit Committee of the Board (BAC)

Dr. Catherine Adeya, a Senior Digital Transformation and Governance Specialist, is an experienced leader and advocate who has worked over 25 years in technology and development. She has rich experience across academia, civil society, government, and the private sector. Catherine was the Director of Research at the World Wide Web Foundation until November 2022. She was responsible for coordinating a global research team, dedicated to achieving a web that is safe and empowering for everyone. She oversaw the organization's groundbreaking research in areas of Internet access, privacy and data rights, and women's rights online, focused on low- and middle-income countries. Catherine has extensive knowledge of ICT for Development, and has numerous publishing and speaking credits on the topic. After her doctoral studies, Catherine began working as a Research Fellow at the United Nations University's Institute for New Technologies in Maastricht, The Netherlands, in 1998.

In 2002, driven by a commitment to tackling global inequality, Catherine moved back to Africa to advocate for the use of digital technologies to expand opportunities and drive development. She was involved in research linking ICT and poverty, critical success factors for the business process outsourcing industry, and collaborated with organizations like the International Development Research Centre. In 2005, she moved from academia to work with civil society on ICTs for Development. Catherine has also been involved in the Kenya ICT policy process since 2006 through the Kenya ICT Action Network, which was the beginning of ICT networks for participatory democracy and economic growth in Kenya.

Catherine was appointed to the first Board of Directors of the Kenya ICT Board (now the ICT Authority of Kenya) in 2007. She has also served as the Director of Business Process Outsourcing/Information Technology Enabled Services at Kenya's Ministry of ICT, in addition to serving as founder CEO of the Konza Technopolis Development Authority. She was also instrumental in the development of the East Africa Centre for Internet Governance and Policy at Strathmore University in Nairobi.

She is an independent Non-executive Director at Standard Chartered Bank Kenya and Old Mutual East Africa Holdings, where she is the Chair of the Technology and Innovation Committees (with a core focus on cybersecurity oversight). She also serves on the advisory board of the East Africa Infrastructure Platform.

Catherine received an undergraduate degree in Information Sciences from Moi University in Kenya. Her postgraduate studies culminated in a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Information and Development from Edinburgh, Scotland. She has certifications in corporate governance, Cybersecurity Audits Training, and Board Governance and Leadership Masterclass.

Catherine has executive education training in Women's Leadership from Yale University; Cybersecurity and Executive Strategy training from Stanford University; and has taken an Innovation-Driven Organizations Masterclass from the Institute of Directors in Kenya.

Catherine was selected in 2023 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 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.

Raúl Echeberría is a broadly recognized Uruguayan expert in Internet development, Internet governance, and digital policies. In the early 1990s, Raúl was one of the Internet pioneers in Uruguay and has since held many relevant roles in the local, regional, and global digital ecosystem. Since 2020, Raúl has been the Executive Director of ALAI, the LatinAmerican Internet Association. He previously worked as Vice President for Global Engagement at Internet Society. He was one of the founders of the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC) and was the CEO of LACNIC for 12 years. Raúl has also served in other important positions, including as a member of the Working Group on Internet Governance (2004–2005), a member of the Uruguayan delegation to the World Summit on the Information Society (2005), a member of the Internet Governance Forum Multistakeholder Advisory Group (2006– 2014 and 2024–2025), the Co-chair of the Executive Committee of NetMundial (2014) and co-chair of Netmundial+10, and a member of the steering committee of the IA Action Summit, France (2024–2025). He currently serves in several volunteer positions in the following organizations: CETIC.br, CETIS, Global Cyber Alliance, UNESCO, and the Internet Society-Uruguay. Raúl has been recognized with national and regional awards for his contributions to the development of the Internet and for his work in digital transformation both in Uruguay and Latin America, including the Trayectoria award presented by LACNIC. He was nominated to serve on the ICANN Board of Directors by the Nominating Committee in 2025. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2028.

As Vice President of Technology at Akamai Technologies, Christian Kaufmann leads the Technology department, which is responsible for driving the technical evolution of the Akamai Edge platform, including a wide set of responsibilities like hardware engineering, data center architecture, network architecture and engineering, and software and systems development.

Christian has extensive experience in corporate governance, including hiring Chief Executive Officers and handling mergers and acquisitions. He has served on various other boards over the last 15 years, including at Internet Exchanges and the Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC).

Before joining Akamai, Christian worked in various technical and managerial roles at several Internet service providers and carriers, including Telia Sonera, Easynet, and Cable & Wireless.

Christian has a Master of Science in Advanced Networking from The Open University in the U.K. He also holds various technical certifications, including Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) and Juniper Networks Certified Internet Expert (JCNIE) certifications.

He was nominated to serve on the ICANN Board of Directors by the Address Supporting Organization (ASO) in 2022. His term will expire at the Annual General Meeting in 2025.

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.

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).