Candidate statement for council

[Tapani Tarvainen]

I am Tapani Tarvainen, Finnish citizen and resident, region Europe, male, recently retired with no paid employment now although I work for Electronic Frontier Finland (Effi) as an unpaid volunteer.

I have no conflicts of interest as far as I know.

I have been actively involved in ICANN since I joined NCUC in 2009. After that I have been in various roles within NCSG, including NCUC and NCSG Executive Committees and as NCSG Chair. At present I am in NCSG EC representing NPOC. I am currently engaged in one PDP working group (Latin Diacritics). I think I have a good understanding of the work of the GNSO.

I am eager to get deeper into the substantive policy issues and I think I could advance non-commercial interests there effectively.

Elsewhere I have served as board member, chair and executive director in several organizations, and I had a long university career which included lots of organizational and legal as well as technical matters. I have a long background in human rights work and as freedom of speech advocate, starting with Amnesty International in the 80s. I have also been involved in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) ever since it was founded, as well as regional IGFs like EuroDIG and the Finnish Internet Forum where I've been a regular speaker. I have also frequently appeared in Finnish parliament as an invited expert on issues relating to freedom of speech and privacy.

As noted I'm now retired so even though I'm still in the board of a couple of small NGOs I will have the time required.

Best wishes to you all,

Tapani Tarvainen