Nomination of Dr. David Morar for the NCSG Chair Position

[David Morar]

Good evening,

Thank you Dr. Badii for this nomination and your kind words! I accept the
nomination. Below is also my candidate statement. Looking forward to this
voting process!

Thank you very much,
Have a great day,
David Morar


Name: David Morar

Region of residence: United States (North America) / Romania (Europe)

Gender: male

Employment: PostDoctoral Fellow, New York University

Conflict of Interest: I have an advising relationship with the Internet
Infrastructure Coalition, but will recuse myself in either/both capacities
on any issues that would imply or even remotely seem to be any conflict of
interest


Reasons for willingness to take on the position:

Professionally, I have been an academic for more than a decade, studying,
to an extent at arms length, important topics, structures, institutions,
always finding ways to deeply understand them, but rarely fully committing
myself to their practice. My area of expertise, technology policy and
governance provided ample opportunities to do so, but I’ve always felt that
I would be better suited as an observer, with whatever level of
participation felt appropriate. I became an ICANN Fellow in March 2017, at
ICANN58 in Copenhagen and things changed a little bit with each new
fellowship (March 2018 at ICANN61 in Puerto Rico, and then March 2019 at
ICANN64 in Kobe). I made one another small step when I joined the NCSG EC
and started to truly understand the importance of the real world
application of everything I’ve been studying, from the theories of
multistakeholderism, to the concepts of technical internet governance. This
doesn’t mean that it would be easy, or that theory fell neatly into place
when dealing with reality, but that’s what made it fascinating. As part of
the EC, I got to witness the amazing work that Bruna Santos, our current
chair put in, and it made me eager to do more. It made me want to work
harder within and for the NCSG. Building on Bruna Santos’ work, I want to
help enable NCSG to have a strong presence and participate in all aspects
of policy-making and governance at ICANN and to advocate for the values it
treasures such as freedom of expression, privacy, access and other values.
I aim to also help NCSG members to get involved with the policy discussions
and come up with a solid outreach plan that can help with capacity building
and maintaining and increasing the diversity of NCSG especially from less
represented regions and demographics. Being a part of the policy making
conversations in Europe and the US has renewed my thinking that the way
forward is through an engaged public being at the table when important
decisions are made, and this position would be the right way that I can
make sure that happens in the internet governance space.


Qualifications for the position:

My work has been, as previously noted, mostly in the academic space, having
worked on a PhD on multistakeholderism in Internet Governance. I have been
active in the internet governance space and count myself lucky to have been
awarded three-time participation in the ICANN Fellowship program (which is
celebrating its 15th year this year!), which kickstarted my career in
internet governance! The ICANN Fellowship connected me to world class
colleagues and mentors, brought me life-long friendships and most
importantly put me on a fast track within the IG world. Since then I have
been an active participant (and panelist) at the Global IGF and IGF-USA, as
well as part of capacity building endeavors like the CYBERSSIG and NASIG.
Beyond these direct connections to the IG world,

and including my time as part of the NCSG EC, I have had substantial career
working on internet governance and policy topics, as a two time Google
Policy Fellow, a research fellow, and a visiting scholar on three
continents (Europe, North and South America), as well as an Associate
Editor for the Journal of Communication Technology (JoCTEC). My work has
appeared in op-eds with the Wall Street Journal and San Francisco
Chronicle, and publications with the Brookings Institute and the Internet
Governance Blog, among others. I am equipped not only with the subject
matter expertise on the issues I’ve spent years analyzing, but also with
the skill of being able to quickly and substantially understand new areas
of work. My two years spent on the Board of the Association for Public
Policy Analysis and Management afforded me great insights into working with
those at the top of an international organization, which, coupled with
learning from Ms. Santos’ time as chair on how to directly and properly
engage with other stakeholder groups, the board and the org positions me
for success!


Statement of availability for the time the position required:

As an academic I am very much built to successfully divide my time between
my responsibilities. I will be cycling off a few of my academic positions
and fellowships at the end of summer, so I will be even more available to
pursue the work of Chair of NCSG.



On Wed, May 4, 2022 at 13:55 farzaneh badii <farzaneh.badii at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> I would like to nominate Dr. David Morar for the NCSG chair position.
> David has worked on NCSG issues behind the scenes so far as a member of
>  NCSG Executive Committee, so he understands the dynamics and the very
> challenges that a chair has to deal with.
>
> David is a versatile scholar. He has studied many aspects of Internet
> governance from Content Moderation to Internet infrastructure. You can read
> about him here: https://davidmorar.com/ and not to be confused with the
> Romanian Football Player :)
>
> David has also been an ICANN fellow, a popular one so he got selected 3
> times. He is from Romania (based in the US) and understands very well the
> problems developing countries are dealing with when it comes to Internet
> governance.
>
> I also believe that David is going to help us participate at ICANN
> strategically since he wrote his PhD thesis about multistakeholder Internet
> governance.
>
> I hope David accepts this nomination.
>
> Farzaneh
>
-- 
David Morar, PhD
@morar <https://twitter.com/morar>
davidmorar.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ncsg.is/pipermail/ncsg-discuss/attachments/20220505/c8fd6d1a/attachment.htm>