Who We Are

  • image of Kathy Kleiman
    Kathy Kleiman
    Co-Founder and President

    Kathy is passionate about protecting free expression, privacy, fair use and due process on the internet. A respected Internet attorney, Kathy’s career has been at the center of the global fight for fair and balanced Internet governance policies since her earliest work in helping to found the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Names (ICANN). She successfully advocated for balance in the rules for the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy, the world’s first online forum for resolving domain name disputes.

    As part of ICANN’s Multi-Stakeholder process, Kathy co-founded the Noncommercial Users Constituency and was elected as its first North American representative to the Names Council for cross-constituency coordination and leadership. She has continued to be deeply involved in shaping the newest of Internet policies, including Accreditation of Proxy and Privacy Providers and keeping new generic top level domains (introduced by ICANN in 2012) open to their industries and communities. She currently serves as Co-Chair of one of ICANN’s three current policy development processes – the Review of All Rights Protections Mechanisms Policy Development Process Working Group (with over 170 members).

    Kathy’s depth of experience make her uniquely qualified to lead the Domain Name Rights Coalition. After receiving her B.A. Harvard University with honors (specializing in computer science and social theory),  Kathy worked as a technologist on Wall Street managing international data communications, programming large-scale databases, auditing data security and preparing disaster recovery plans. She received her J.D. from Boston University School of Law with honors and went on to serve as Director of Policy for .ORG The Public Interest Registry, co-founder and later head of the Internet Law and Policy practice of Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth (one of the first telecommunications and Internet firms in the US). At FHH, Kleiman helped industry and community groups maintain equal access to domain names in new top level domains, including .SEARCH, .CLOUD, .BOOK and .MOBILE.

    Kathy’s career specializes is helping to provide fair and balanced policies for the more than 140 million domain name registrants, including traditionally underrepresented individuals, noncommercial organizations, entrepreneurs and small businesses. At NamesCon 2018, Kathy received the Internet Commerce Association’s Lonnie Borck Memorial Award “in recognition of your extraordinary efforts in championing the rights of domain name registrants.” Kathy can be reached here and on Twitter at @DomainRights and @KleimK.

  • image of Michael Karanicolas
    Michael Karanicolas
    Director of Policy

    Michael is a human rights advocate who focuses on freedom of expression, the right to information, transparency, and digital rights. Based in Halifax, Canada, he serves as the North American representative on the Executive Committee of ICANN’s Non-Commercial Users’ Constituency, the Rapporteur for the Workstream 2 subgroup redrafting ICANN’s transparency policies, and the Co-Chair of the Cross Community Working Party on ICANN’s Corporate and Social Responsibility to Respect Human Rights.

    Before beginning work for the Domain Name Rights Coalition, Michael was the Senior Legal Officer for the Centre for Law and Democracy, where his work included campaigns to promote human rights in Myanmar, Indonesia, the Maldives, Malawi, Palestine, Afghanistan, Jordan and Pakistan. Closer to home, he has participated in law reform processes in Quebec, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador, and been invited to speak before federal Parliamentary Committees four times since the last election.

    Michael currently serves as the President of the Right to Know Coalition, a Canadian-based NGO which works to enhance governmental transparency, and the Canada researcher for the Open Government Partnership. Michael has published extensively on a range of digital rights issues, including human rights rules for private sector tech firms, privacy and mass surveillance, expanding access to the Internet, revamping intellectual property laws, and encryption and anonymization. Michael holds a B.A. with honors from Queen’s University and an LL.B. from the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University. Michael can be reached here and on Twitter at @DomainRights and @M_Karanicolas.

  • image of Mikki Barry
    Mikki Barry
    Co-Founder and Director

    Mikki has been a leader in Internet policy since the late 1990s. She testified before Congress regarding ICANN and domain names, and worked on numerous ICANN policies.  A long time Internet technologist, Mikki co-founded InterCon Systems Corporation, maker of the first Internet applications software on the Macintosh platform.  Through InterCon, Mikki successfully negotiated the creation of the first commercial Internet Service Provider in Japan.  She is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and Boston University.

  • image of A. Mark Massey
    A. Mark Massey
    Director

    Mark is an experienced senior Technical Project Manager and global technical management instructor. His background includes over 30 years of work in designing, implementing and managing DNS-based and other network-based information systems for government, military and corporate IT departments. Mark’s book Winning Strategies for Project Management will be published in Q1 2017. Mark is a graduate of George Washington University in Business Administration with a specialty in Information Systems Technologies.