Internet Governance and Public Diplomacy with Fadi Chehadé, President and CEO of ICANN

The USC Center on Public Diplomacy was pleased to welcome Fadi Chehadé, President and CEO of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which is a non-profit corporation tasked with managing the logistics of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and domain names. Fadi was also a participant in the 2012 CPD Summer Institute in Public Diplomacy class.

Chehadé presented his his strategic priorities at ICANN and how public diplomacy can protect an open and sustainable internet. He went on to discuss how this involves getting closer to stakeholders particularly in the developing world. He spoke about his work to bring new people into the ICANN community, so their voices can be heard about the internet’s future.

Prior to his work with ICANN, Chehadé served as chief executive officer of Vocado LLC, a U.S. firm that is a provider of cloud-based software for the administration of educational institutions.

About Fadi Chehadé
Fadi Chehadé's career has been defined by building consensus and promoting collaborative technologies and practices. He has more than 25 years of experience in building and leading progressive Internet enterprises, leveraging relationships with senior executives and government officials across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the United States. Chehadé,is a citizen of Egypt, Lebanon, and the United States. He was born in Beirut, Lebanon, to Egyptian parents and left the then war-torn country in 1980 at the age of 18. He speaks fluent Arabic, English, French, and Italian. Most recently he served as Chief Executive Officer of Vocado LLC, a U.S. firm that is a provider of cloud-based software for the administration of educational institutions. Fadi Chehadé is also the founder of Nilorado, a youth organization raising funds to support schools for handicapped children in Upper Egypt, also delivering bicycles to boys and girls from needy families in that region who otherwise cannot reach their schools.

Event Summary
As the internet becomes increasingly important, the number of parties on line creates many issues that require diplomatic efforts. On Thursday, January 31, the USC Center on Public Diplomacy was pleased to welcome Fadi Chehadé, President and CEO of ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) for a discussion on some of these issues.

Chehadé predicts that the internet will be the next big player in geopolitics, having a great impact across economical, political and cultural boundaries as was recently highlighted in The Economist . The internet is opening up and creating a number of ways to upset how governments work. Who, then, should be governing the internet? ICANN has developed a new type of bottom-up governing system that allows all of the internet’s stakeholders (governments, civil societies, corporations) to have a say in the future of the internet. Public diplomacy has been crucial in promoting this type of government.

Chehadé spoke to his recent participation in the 2012 CPD Summer Institute in Public Diplomacy as an invaluable experience and helping him enable ICANN to engage with governments and the public at large. Presented with questions on ICANN’s ability to negotiate among different stakeholders with often competing goals, he emphasized the importance of the internet remaining united—“One Internet.”

He went on to explain that public diplomacy is a vital tool in engaging with governments and other stakeholders who disagree on the usage of data behind websites. Hopefully, with the efforts of ICANN and other actors striving for the same goal, further discussions can move towards a consensus government rather than a fragmented internet in the future.

Questions posed during this conversation include “how do you involve the public in any of this process without just politicizing things?” and “what are the challenges between sovereignty control and the diverse interests of stakeholders?” Fadi reiterated that all of the work at ICANN is transparent, public and open. From working with publics, governments, non-state actors, a mandate of consensus-driven governance is at ICANN’s core mission and that ICANN continuously works to incorporate this in all the work.