President and CEO of CIRA
Joined on March 25, 2009 – Canada
Total Post Views: 9,184
| About |
Byron G. Holland is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA).
Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for Internet governance, Byron's leadership has brought CIRA to the forefront of innovation. At CIRA, Byron has led a wholesale rewrite of the .CA registry and related policies and business rules. Since the registry rewrite, .CA has become the fastest growing country code top-level domain (TLD) in the world, and the second fastest growing TLD overall.
Byron has developed a strong international profile for CIRA and the .CA top-level domain. He is vice-chairperson of the Country Codes Name Supporting Organization (ccNSO), the body that represents the interests of all country code top-level domains and leads policy development initiatives at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Byron is also an active participant in the United Nations co-ordinated Internet Governance Forum, and other Internet governance fora.
Prior to joining CIRA, Byron helped found the third largest coalition loyalty program in Canada, Futura Rewards. As the Chief Operating Officer at Futura, he oversaw the development and growth of the company from a small upstart to a publicly traded company with more than 100 brand partners and 400,000 members.
Byron maintains a world recognized blog, Public Domain (www.cirablog.ca). On his blog, he provides leading insight into issues of importance to Canadians on Internet-related matters. Byron can also be found on Twitter at @CIRA001.
Byron received a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from the University of Western Ontario and a Master of Business Administration from Queen's University. He also holds his ICD.D designation from the Institute of Corporate Directors.
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If you follow the Internet governance world like I do, you've no doubt had time to ponder the news of former ICANN Board Chair Peter Dengate Thrush's appointment as Executive Chairman of Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (TLDH). This was a seemingly fast jump from the body that coordinates the Internet (whose most recent milestone was to approve the creation of new gTLDs) to one of the key companies that stands to actively benefit from this burgeoning part of the domain name industry. Further, he's taken up a position that, according to reports, will allow him to benefit substantially as well. more»
