Fadi Chehadé

Former President and CEO of ICANN
Serial Tech Entrepreneur

Fadi Chehadé is a globally recognized leader on digital norms, a technology architect, and serial entrepreneur. He founded and led several companies in the digital space including: Vocado LLC and Viacore. He is currently an advisory board member with the World Economic Forum’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a member of the UN Secretary General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation , and a partner at Abry Partners.

Fadi serves on the corporate boards of Sentry Data Systems and Interactions LLC, and the advisory board of the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy. For two years, he was a Senior Advisor to Prof. Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum. As former President and CEO of ICANN, the global authority managing the Internet's logical infrastructure and ensuring ‘one’ Internet for the world, Fadi guided its historic transition to an independent transnational institution governed jointly by private, public, and civic stakeholders. A former research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and fellow at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, where he worked with faculty and students to explore innovations in digital governance.

Keynote: Improving ICANN | ICANN53 [23:46] - Get Sharable Link

Keynote: Improving ICANN | ICANN53 [23:46]

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In Conversation: What everyday citizens can do to claim power on the internet | TED [8:34]

In Conversation: Smart Policy for a Digital Economy | World Economic Forum [31:49]

Talks & Conversations with Fadi Chehadé

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Strengthening global cooperation to better govern in the digital space

How to manage the transformation of the economy and society by new digital technologies (AI, Blockchain, iOT)

Ways to help businesses navigate national and international laws and rules surrounding digital technology deployments to avoid market limitations and difficulties

Does the internet spell the end of the nation-state system of governance?

Will we be able to maintain one internet space for all humanity?

Who really runs the internet?

Is privacy dead in the digital world?

Will giant technology companies be good stewards of the digital 21st Century?

tech giants now have more power to share economies and societies than governments and international institutions they also have more visibility and control over the lives of ordinary people the speed of technology development trumps the slowness of policy/law making processes the transnational natu ...

tech giants now have more power to share economies and societies than governments and international institutions
they also have more visibility and control over the lives of ordinary people
the speed of technology development trumps the slowness of policy/law making processes
the transnational nature of the internet anyway makes it hard to impose/enforce laws
voluntary norms/protocols implemented by tech giants are urgently needed to balance the enormous power they have gained
The World Economic Forum and the US Secretary General's new Panel are among efforts to actualize this new system of norms/protocols

Biography

Fadi Chehadé is a Partner at ABRY Partners in Boston, a middle-market private equity firm focused on media, communications, and digital businesses. He is an advisory board member with the World Economic Forum’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution that focuses on maximizing the benefits of science and technology for society. He is also a member of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation that will advance proposals to strengthen international cooperation in the digital space.

Fadi serves on the corporate boards of Sentry Data Systems and Interactions LLC, and the advisory board of the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy. He is a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where he works with faculty and students to explore innovations in digital governance.

For the prior two years, Fadi was a Senior Advisor to Prof. Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, where he focused on public-private cooperation to address issues affecting the digital economy.

In 2016, Fadi concluded his 4-year tenure leading ICANN, the global authority managing the Internet's logical infrastructure, which ensures ‘one’ Internet for the world. As President and CEO of ICANN, he led the globalization of the organization, strengthened its operations, and expanded the global trust and legitimacy of its transnational role. He also guided ICANN's historic transition to an independent transnational institution governed jointly by private, public, and civic stakeholders.

Fadi has founded and led several companies in the digital space including: Vocado LLC acquired by Oracle in 2018 and Viacore purchased by IBM in 2006. He also founded and served as the first CEO of RosettaNet, an IT Industry Coalition establishing pioneering standards for eBusiness in the late 1990s.

Over the last 30 years, Fadi has held several industry posts at global corporations like AT&T, Ingram, and IBM, where he was General Manager of IBM Global Technology Services in the Middle East and Africa.

He received an M.S. in Engineering Management from Stanford University and a B.S. in Computer Science summa cum laude from New York University.

Fadi is bicoastal - dividing his time between Los Angeles and Boston.

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Fadi Chehadé