One of the 'Net's most powerful women lands a new role

One of the Internet’s most powerful women has a new job. Leslie Daigle is the first chief Internet technology officer at the Internet Society. 

Daigle’s new position, which was announced Wednesday, is the latest in a series of high-profile hires by the nonprofit organization, which is dedicated to helping the Internet grow through education, policy and standards development. Daigle previously held engineering and leadership posts with Cisco and VeriSign. She was the first woman to lead the Internet Society’s Internet Architecture Board, and she held the chair position from 2002 until 2007. An expert in the Internet’s naming and directory services, Daigle has been active with the IETF since 1995. Network World's National Correspondent Carolyn Duffy Marsan spoke to Daigle about her new role. Here are excerpts from their conversation:

Describe your new position.

My role here is to bring more of a technical presence to the Internet Society as it reaches out to work with the various organizations and committees that are developing Internet standards and developing the Internet itself. It’s a forward-looking role that involves dealing with the issues that are facing the Internet as a whole and making sure there are community identification and understanding of the issues and getting the right players together to resolve the issues. The Internet Society already works with the Regional Internet Registries and ICANN [the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers] in terms of developing standards, best practices and technology in an open fashion. This is just another step in making sure that the open process works.

What do you hope to accomplish in this new job?

I see increasingly that there are stresses and strains as the Internet gets bigger and more players are involved. I’d like to see us retain an environment where technical people come together and identify and resolve problems in an open fashion. I view the Internet Society as an obvious place to make that happen. Specifically, what I would like to accomplish in this new role is to bring different organizations together to continue to help the Internet grow. That includes registries, standards bodies, including the ITU [International Telecommunication Union] and the W3C [World Wide Web Consortium.] The IETF itself establishes relationships with these organizations, but I think the Internet Society can help fill in the blanks or fill in around the edges.

Are there specific issues facing the Internet where you think you can make a difference?

The IPv4/IPv6 transition is one area that the Internet Society has been working on for a while. The issue of internationalization, particularly internationalized domain names, is another important issue. The development of emergency services over the Internet is an interesting area because you see nontechnology, policy organizations that need to be made aware of how the Internet works, and Internet technology groups need to understand the policies involved.