We are dedicated to deliver on our mission. Discover our Executive Team, Board of Directors, and Advisory Council.
PIR Executive Management
The PIR team features highly knowledgeable individuals making a significant impact in areas that matter to all of us, from Internet policy and DNS Abuse to responsible nonprofit practices. By sharing this knowledge and expertise, PIR fulfills its mission of empowering organizations online.
Jon Nevett
President and CEO
Jonathon Nevett is the President and CEO of Public Interest Registry (PIR). Jon is a veteran of the domain name industry, co-founding Donuts Inc. in 2010 and helping to raise in excess of $150M to form a registry of over 240 Internet domain extensions. Before PIR and Donuts, he served as Senior Vice President at Network Solutions, where he was responsible for policy, government affairs, registry relations, and the corporate ethics office.
Jon also co-founded the Domain Name Association, an industry trade association, and has participated as a leader at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in various capacities. He has served on many boards, including Chair of the board of NameJet and Central Registry Solutions, two joint ventures in the domain name industry, and Vice-Chair of the board of the Green Acres School. During the Obama Administration, he was appointed to the Online Safety and Technology Working Group to help protect children on the Internet. Jon earned a BA in Political Science from Binghamton University and a JD from Harvard Law School.
Brian Cimbolic
Chief Legal and Policy Officer
Brian is the Chief Legal and Policy Officer for Public Interest Registry (PIR) and oversees the company’s legal affairs. PIR is a nonprofit company based in Reston, Virginia and is the registry operator of the .ORG top-level domain. Previously, Brian was Deputy General Counsel of PIR and before joining PIR in 2014, Brian was an Associate at Krooth & Altman, LLP, working with clients in real estate finance and litigation matters. Brian holds a B.A. from Catholic University, and a J.D. from American University, Washington College of Law. Brian currently lives in Ashburn, VA with his wonderful wife and three kids, but was born and raised in Maryland which explains why he is a huge Baltimore Ravens fan(atic).
Judy Song-Marshall
Chief Strategy Officer
Judy is the Chief Strategy Officer of Public Interest Registry (PIR). Leading strategy, communications, and marketing for PIR, she has almost 30 years of marketing expertise and over fifteen years of domain name industry experience. Beginning her career as a marketing intern at the nonprofit People for the American Way, promoting free expression, she went on to work at Public Interest Data Incorporated helping nonprofits with their fundraising efforts in the 1990s. She worked at the marketing departments of MCI and AOL before joining Neustar, and the domain name industry. Over the course of her career at Neustar she managed marketing for several products, including Registry Services. She launched .NYC, and rebranded the .us ccTLD as well. Most recently she oversaw Neustar’s Policy, Industry Affairs, and Compliance teams. She was the policy manager and contracting officer for the .us ccTLD and served as the Secretariat of the usTLD Stakeholder Council. She currently is a member of the Forbes Nonprofit Council, serves on the ICANNWIKI Board, sits on the .us ccTLD Stakeholder Council, and is the former Treasurer and board member of The Domain Name Association.
Rick Wilhelm
Chief Technology Officer
Rick comes to PIR with an accomplished background in domain name infrastructure, cloud, and software-based platforms and services. Prior to joining PIR, Rick served as Verisign’s Vice President of Platform Management. He also spent over a decade serving in executive positions for Network Solutions and Neustar, where he was the principal architect of the company’s first gTLD registry. He has held leadership positions within the ICANN community, serving for nearly three years as a member of ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee.
Mary Cornwell
Senior Vice President, Human Resources
Mary brings more than 20 years’ Human Resources experience to the Public Interest Registry (PIR) leadership team. She began her career with Prudential Healthcare, but ultimately found her niche building HR infrastructure for small to medium-sized federal contractors in the IT industry. At PIR, Mary is responsible for providing vision and leadership regarding human capital strategy, recruiting, compensation and benefits, personnel policy, employee engagement and organizational culture.
Liz Szabo
Senior Vice President, Finance
Liz has over twenty years of finance and accounting experience in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. She began her career in public accounting and worked in the finance departments of several large multinational organizations including Sprint International and AOL, before transitioning to the nonprofit sector and eventually joining PIR in 2014. She is a licensed CPA and holds a B.A. in Accounting from Catholic University and an MBA in International Business from the University of South Carolina. Over the years, she has also served many .ORGs through her volunteer work with organizations including the Girl and Boy Scouts of America and Rise Against Hunger.
Anand Vora
Vice President, Business Affairs
Anand is an experienced strategy and business development executive with over a decade of experience in the domain name and internet industry. Prior to returning to Public Interest Registry, Anand served as the Director of Business Development at Donuts, Inc., where he led the go-to-market strategy with a focus on international markets; including leading the Donuts China operations. Anand is a regular public speaker at industry events.
PIR Board of Directors
Sharing their diverse perspectives from across multiple industries, PIR’s Board of Directors shapes a holistic and global strategic vision for the organization. The Board draws on its wealth of nonprofit and corporate sector knowledge to provide best practices for planning, governance, and oversight.
Saerin Cho
Chair (N. America)
Term: 2021 – 2026
Audit and Risk Committee Compensation Committee Finance and Investment Committee
Saerin Cho is an attorney with comprehensive experience in advising, researching, and representing mission-driven organizations and civil society worldwide. Saerin is currently the Chief Legal Officer at Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Previously, Saerin was the General Counsel of Digital Green Foundation, a global development organization that provides technology solutions for farmers to build prosperous communities.
Prior to Digital Green, Saerin was the Chief Eligibility Counsel and Deputy General Counsel at TechSoup, a global social enterprise that connects technology resources with nonprofit organizations in 236 jurisdictions. Saerin is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. Ms. Cho was re-appointed to serve a three-year term as of July 1, 2023.
Keith Davidson
Vice Chair (Asia Pacific)
Term: 2019 – 2025
Audit and Risk Committee Finance and Investment Committee
Keith Davidson has held a number of senior management and board positions in the not-for-profit and commercial sectors. Keith’s expertise crosses a variety of disciplines including newspaper, radio and, more recently, the Internet. He has held various roles including Executive Director and member of the Governing Council of InternetNZ, which manages the .nz top level domain. Keith has been active in ICANN since its inception and was vice chair of the country code Names Supporting Organisation for 6 years. He also chaired and co-chaired a number of ICANN working groups.
In ISOC, Keith served as a trustee from 2012 to 2015, and chaired their Nominations Committee. Keith currently runs a small consultancy that provides advice to ccTLDs, and is enjoying a less hectic lifestyle in semi-retirement in New Zealand. He asserts that responsible organisations like PIR have a duty of strong leadership and best practice governance as an exemplar model TLD. Mr. Davidson was re-appointed to serve a three-year term as of July 1, 2022.
Eric Burger
Treasurer (N. America)
Term: 2021 – 2027
Finance and Investment Committee, Chair Compensation Committee
Eric Burger is Research Director of the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative and Reserch Professor at Virginia Tech. His research and teaching covers cybersecurity, distributed computing, DLT, systems economics and risk, policy, and network governance. He returns to the PIR Board after serving on detail as Assistant Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and prior to that as the Chief Technology Officer of the Federal Communications Commission. Prior to Virginia Tech, he was a Professor at Georgetown University. Before academia, he was CTO of several network equipment and enterprise software companies. He currently serves on a number of advisory boards. He is also a member of the Industry Advisory Council of Medgar Evers College CUNY, designated a predominantly black institution / minority-serving institution (PBI/MSI) and Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Computing Advisory Board.
Dr. Burger has published over 20 IETF, 3GPP, and W3C standards and holds over 20 issued U.S. patents. He is a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery, a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors. He has a SBEE, MBA, and CS PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and the Illinois Institute of Technology. Mr. Burger was re-appointed to serve a three-year term as of July 1, 2024.
Michael Silber
Member (Africa)
Term: 2022 – 2025
Audit and Risk Committee, Chair Compensation Committee NetBeacon Institute Advisory Council Liaison
Michael (Mike) Silber is an attorney and Group Executive Regulatory Affairs at MTN, Africa’s largest mobile network operator that provides voice, data, fintech, digital, enterprise, wholesale and API services to 295 million customers in 19 markets. Mike previously served on the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and has served numerous Internet naming and numbering organizations as well as industry associations and academic and resource networks.
Lena Beck Rørvig
Member (Europe)
Term: 2022 – 2025
Compensation Committee, Chair Finance and Investment Committee
Lena Beck Rørvig is an entrepreneur and executive coach unlocking global leaders’ potential. Ms Rørvig lives and works internationally and has a diverse background as a stockbroker, Global HR executive, entrepreneur, and angel investor. Lena’s board experience includes a range of non-profit and for-profit boards. She holds an M.Sc. (economics) for Copenhagen Business School and executive education from INSEAD and Henley Business School.
Kathryn Kleiman
Member (N. America)
Term: 2023 – 2026
Audit and Risk Committee PIR Advisory Council Liaison
Kathryn Kleiman is a professor at the American University Washington College of Law. She previously worked at law firms where she specialized in Internet law and policy and has won various awards for her work with women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM).
George Sadowsky
Member (N. America)
Term: 2024 – 2027
Audit and Risk Committee Finance and Investment Committee
George Sadowsky received an A.B. degree in mathematics from Harvard, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from Yale. He has worked as an applied mathematician and a programmer, and has directed computing centers and networks at Yale University, the Brookings Institution, Northwestern University and New York University.
At the United Nations during 1973-1986, he supported numerous technical assistance projects in ICT including the Chinese Population Census of 1982, and has worked in more than 50 developing countries. During 2001-2006 he was Executive Director of the Global Internet Policy Initiative with Internet policy projects in 17 countries in transition. He has been a consultant to foundations, governments and international agencies.
He was a Director of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) during 2009-2018. Previously he served on Boards of AppliedTheory Corporation, the Corporation for Research and Educational Networking, the New York State Educational and Research Network and the Internet Society. From 2005-2009 he was a Special Adviser to the chair of the Internet Governance Forum.
In 2013 he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame, and in 2022 he received ISOC’s Jon Postel award for meritorious service for the Internet. He has written and lectured extensively on ICT and development (see georgesadowsky.org/ for more information).
Jon Nevett
Non-Voting Member (N. America)
Jonathon Nevett is the President and CEO of Public Interest Registry (PIR). Jon is a veteran of the domain name industry, co-founding Donuts Inc. in 2010 and helping to raise in excess of $150M to form a registry of over 240 Internet domain extensions. Before PIR and Donuts, he served as Senior Vice President at Network Solutions, where he was responsible for policy, government affairs, registry relations, and the corporate ethics office.
Jon also co-founded the Domain Name Association, an industry trade association, and has participated as a leader at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in various capacities. He has served on many boards, including Chair of the board of NameJet and Central Registry Solutions, two joint ventures in the domain name industry, and Vice-Chair of the board of the Green Acres School. During the Obama Administration, he was appointed to the Online Safety and Technology Working Group to help protect children on the Internet.
Jon earned a BA in Political Science from Binghamton University and a JD from Harvard Law School. Jon serves as a non-voting member of the PIR Board.
Sally Wentworth
ISOC CEO & Liaison
Sally Wentworth is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Internet Society and Internet Society Foundation, leading both organizations in building and protecting an Internet for everyone. Passionate about the Internet as a resource for social and economic development, and with her people-first approach, she engages with the community on critical issues affecting the Internet and showcases the life-changing impact the organizations’ work has on people across the world.
Since joining the Internet Society in 2009, Sally has focused on building coalitions among developed and developing countries and Internet stakeholders and leading the Internet Society’s work in the development, engagement, and promotion of global public policies that support and enable a globally connected Internet. Sally is particularly passionate about building bridges between Internet technical experts and policymakers.
Sally came to the Internet Society from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where she served as Assistant Director for Telecommunications and Information Policy from 2007-2009. There, she represented and advised senior officials and built multi-agency consensus around complex technical and regulatory Internet policies. She had responsibility for the government-wide coordination and implementation of policies related to Internet governance, cybersecurity, telecommunications policy, intellectual property and patent reform, privacy, and other information technology policies.
From 1999-2007, Sally served as the Economic Bureau Foreign Affairs Officer at the U.S. Department of State. As a policy advisor on Internet policy issues, she organized international public diplomacy campaigns and advised senior diplomats on complex negotiations on technology issues. She represented the U.S. on a wide range of foreign policy and technology issues in dozens of international negotiations, including for the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Sally joined the State Department in 1999 as a Presidential Management Fellow.
Sally holds an M.A. in International Political Economy from the Claremont Graduate University (Claremont, California) and a B.A. in Political Science from Westmont College (Santa Barbara, California). She is based in Dayton, Ohio (United States).
Past PIR Board Directors
Gerry Barañano
(2002-2003)
Larry Landweber
(2002-2003)
Alan Levin
(2002-2003)
Andy Linton
(2002-2003)
Marc Rotenberg
(2002-2006)
Frode Greisen
(2002-2004)
David Maher
(2002-2004)
Lynn St. Amour
(2002-2013)(ISOC Liaison)
Geoff Houston
(2003-2005)
Kenny Huang
(2003-2004)
Amadeu Abril i Abril
(2003-2005)
Susan Estrada
(2004-2007)
Barbara Fraser
(2004, 2005-2007, 2008-2011)
Eva Frolich
(2004-2007)
Glenn Ricart
(2004-2006, 2007-2010, 2010-2011)
Pindar Wong
(2006)
Kuo-Wei Wu
(2008-2009)
Raimundo Beca
(2011-2014)
Erik Huizer
(2007-2015)
Maarten Botterman
(2008-2016)
Alexa Raad
(2009-2010) (non-voting)
Amitabh Singhal
(2010-2016, 2019-2021)
Art Reilly
(2011-2017)
Eric Burger
(2015-2017)
Ingrid Srinath
(2013-2018)
Hartmut Glaser
(2014-2018)
Kathryn Brown
(2013-2018)(ISOC Liaison)
Roberto Gaetano
(2013-2019)
Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken
(2016-2019)
Suzanne Woolf
(2018-2019)
Jay Daley
(2018-2020)
Greg Kapfer
(2019-2022)
Lise Fuhr
(2016-2022)
Narelle Clark
(2018-2023)
Jeffrey Bedser
(2017-2023)
Andrew Sullivan
(2018-2024)(ISOC Liaison)
PIR Advisory Council
The Advisory Council helps PIR in its mission to create more and stronger mission-driven organizations and provides input and recommendations on issues affecting the broader .ORG Community, including noncommercial Internet users, nonprofits, and mission-driven organizations. Council members reflect diverse subject matter interests, including, but not limited to, educational, artistic, cultural, human rights, political, religious, and scientific sectors.
Andrea Abramowitz, USA (2023-2025)
Andrea Abramowitz is from the United States and currently lives in Frisco, Texas. Andrea is CEO of Kayla Cares 4 Kids, a Florida-based 501(c)(3) twice honored as a .ORG Impact Awards finalist, including one for Kayla Abramowitz (Andrea’s daughter) as the 2020 Outstanding Volunteer winner. A Telly Award winning journalist, Ms. Abramowitz also actively advocates for a number of influential health organizations, including the Arthritis Foundation and Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation.
Pamela Ateka, Kenya (2021-2024)
Pamela Ateka is from Kenya and currently lives in Nairobi, Kenya. Pamela is an international speaker and author who is a long-time advocate for women in civic leadership roles in Kenya. Pamela has over 20 years’ experience working to increase opportunities for displaced Kenyan youth. She is the founder of the Community Focus Group, which informs, connects and mobilizes local communities in Nairobi to help protect human rights and promote sustainable livelihoods. Community Focus Group was a 2019 .ORG Impact Award winner.
Babatunde Bale, Nigeria (2023-2025)
Babatunde Bale is from Nigeria and currently lives in Lagos, Nigeria. Dr. Bale is an optometrist with over three years of experience in Nigeria-based social entrepreneurship and health advocacy organizations. He has earned international accolades for his work on visual impairment projects, including a 2022 .ORG Impact Award finalist for for The R.E.T.I.N.A. Initiative.
Tijani Ben Jemaa, Tunisia (2023-2025)
Tijani Ben Jemaa is from Tunisia and currently lives in Tunis, Tunisia. With over fifteen years of experience in ICANN’s At-Large structures, including as Vice Chair of ALAC and Vice Chair of AFRALO, Tijani brings a wealth of end-user advocacy experience. In addition to numerous Internet Governance activities, Mr. Ben Jemaa, a retired telecommunications engineer, served many years in broadcasting and networking senior roles.
Beth Bourgeois, USA (2021-2024)
Beth Bourgeois is from the United States and currently lives in Monument, Colorado. Beth has over 20 years’ experience doing communications, media relations, and public relations work for mission-driven organizations including the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees. Beth currently is the media relations officer for Warrior Canine Connection, a U.S.-based non-profit that breeds, trains, and places highly skilled service dogs with wounded service members and veterans.
Lianna Galstyan, Armenia (2021-2024)
Lianna Galstyan is from Armenia and currently lives in Los Angeles, California. Lianna has been instrumental in leading numerous projects to enhance the Internet and local language content in Armenia. Lianna has worked at Armenia’s country code top-level domain (ccTLD) operator for over 20 years and currently serves as a Vice Chair of the Board. She also is the Board Chair of the Internet Society Armenia Chapter, has served as the UN Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) member for three years, and is the Coordinator of the national IGF. Lianna also participates in ICANN’s At-Large community and has served as the Vice Chair of APRALO for the past four years.
Diane Lebson, USA (2021-2024)
Diane Lebson is from the United States and currently lives in Camden, Maine. Diane is a published author and noted speaker that has decades of experience in small and large mission-driven organizations. Diane is the founder and CEO of Evergreen Philanthropic Solutions, which works with non-profit organizations around the world to empower people to do good.
Prudence Malinki, UK(2023-2025)
Prudence Malinki is from the United Kingdom and currently lives in London, United Kingdom. Ms. Malinki has spent over five years at MarkMonitor specializing in Global Corporate Domain Name Portfolio management and Strategic Relationship Development, and is active in ICANN’s Registrar Stakeholder Group and various Policy Advisory Councils across the globe including Ireland (.ie), Belgium (DNS.be) and New Zealand (Internet NZ).
