UASG Elects New Chair and Vice Chairs

Leadership to Continue the Group’s Work in Ensuring the Universal Acceptance of All Domain Names

15 MARCH 2019 – The Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) elects new Chair and three new Vice Chairs as its leadership team. The new team will continue the global consortium’s mission to ensure that all domain names are treated equally.

At ICANN64 in Kobe, Japan, UASG members elected Dr. Ajay Data (India), founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of XgenPlus, as chair, Dusan Stojicevic (Serbia), Manager, Gransy s.r.o,. and Dennis Tan Tanaka (USA), Senior Platform Manager of Verisign, as Vice Chairs. Mark Svancarek (USA) Principal Program Manager, Privacy & Regulatory Affairs, Tech Policy & Internet Governance, of Microsoft retains his position as Vice Chair for a second term.

The new team succeeds founder and former Chair Ram Mohan (USA, India), Chief Operating Officer at Afilias Limited and former Vice Chairs Rich Merdinger (USA), Vice President of Domains at GoDaddy, and Edmon Chung (Hong Kong), CEO of DotAsia, who were instrumental in laying the groundwork and driving forth the goals of the group since its formation in 2015.

“It has been an honor to serve as the inaugural Chair of the Universal Acceptance Steering Group,” said Ram Mohan. “As we look to the future, the Group’s mission is more important than ever to ensure that organizations understand how to keep pace with the evolving domain name system and can help bring the next billion people online.”

Under Mohan’s leadership the UASG helped raise awareness of the need for Universal Acceptance (UA) by engaging key stakeholders and developing documentation and resources for UA readiness; developing processes for measuring UA compliance and establishing benchmarks; and emphasizing the importance of Email Address Internationalization (EAI). Additional activities include performing product set evaluations, logging and following up on non-compliance issues, providing self-testing facilities and more.

“Universal Acceptance is essential to creating true multilingual Internet,” said Dr. Ajay Data. “I am excited to work with Ram and the UASG team to ensure a smooth transition and continue group’s efforts to help build a better Internet for everyone.”

The newly elected Chair and Vice Chairs assume their roles effective immediately.

“Dr. Ajay Data has been an active member of the UASG for many years and will able to pick up where former Chair Ram Mohan left off to help drive continued awareness of the need for Universal Acceptance of all domain names,” said Don Hollander, secretary general of the UASG. “I look forward to working closely with our newly appointed leadership team.”

For more information on UA or to get involved with the efforts of the UASG, visit uasg.tech.

About UASG

The Universal Acceptance Steering Group is an Internet community initiative that was founded in February 2015 and tasked with undertaking activities that will effectively promote the Universal Acceptance of all valid domain names and email addresses. The group is made up of members from more than 120 companies (including Apple, GoDaddy, Google, Microsoft and Verisign), governments and community groups. The UASG receives significant financial and administrative support from ICANN. For more information, visit https://uasg.tech/.