PIR Welcomes Kathy Kleiman as Director of Policy

I am thrilled to welcome  Kathy Kleiman, to our team and introduce her to the community as PIR’s Director of Policy.

Her accomplishments in advocacy, law and policy read like Tom Hank’s filmography – a fitting comparison since some of you may know her work as the award-winning historian and Executive Producer of the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) Programmers oral histories and documentary.

As an undergrad at Harvard, she discovered the ENIAC Programmers, and their pioneering contributions in the early years of computers and software.   When she learned that these women were not credited for their work or invited to ENIAC’s 50th Anniversary  celebration, she was determined to right the ship, and is working on the first feature documentary to tell their fascinating story.

In the years that followed, Kathy worked tirelessly for fair and balanced Internet policies with ICANN and the world at large. Her active advocacy of free speech and fair use principles, as embraced by the .ORG community, resulted in fair and more balanced rules online. These include the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), the global dispute resolution mechanism for domain names, and other ICANN policies.

In fact, as a result of Kathy’s leadership, she became part of the group which created ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) in 1998. She co-founded the Noncommercial Users Constituency of ICANN to represent ICANN’s .ORG registrants and noncommercial community in 1999. And long before the Winter Olympics arrived in Vancouver, she organized a Privacy Conference at the ICANN Vancouver meeting, entitled Building Bridges on ICANN’s Whois Questions.

Kathy’s steadfast advocacy of policies in the public interest, is not only a great match for PIR but is also a welcome addition to the many policy and regulatory discussions taking place   As part of the PIR team, Kathy will work to represent the interests of  the .ORG Community as well as all internet users, to ensure we leave behind a  stronger, more secure and stable Internet  for the next generation who follows.