.ORG Loses CEO

From the ‘Great Leadership‘ files:

Alexa Raad (pic left), the President
and Chief Executive Officer of PIR (Public Interest Registry) which administers the .ORG Top Level Domain (TLD) is leaving her post effective on September 24th.

I’ve had the good fortune to interview Raad at multiple points over the last 3.5 years that she has been CEO and have always been impressed by her foresight and leadership.

The TLD space for years was a relatively static one – it was just about the administration of domain names and the registry/registrar relationship. Things have changed in recent years, and in my view Raad helped to play a crucial role, during a critical period in the evolution of the Internet.

The .ORG TLD under the leadership of Raad was among the first major gTLDs to push for DNSSEC security two years ago. Raad realized that DNSSEC needed a multi-vendor/stakeholder coalition and she was instrumental in the formation of the DNSSEC Industry Coalition. Now in 2010, .ORG is signed for DNSSEC and that major shift in the way the Internet works is now in full swing.