RIPE has announced the appointment of both a new Chair and a Vice Chair. It’s the first time that the selection of Chair has been carried out by the RIPE Community, as explained by RIPE in today’s announcement:
This is the first time that the RIPE Chair has been selected by the community according to an established procedure. For the first 25 years, RIPE was chaired by Rob Blokzijl, who as one of the founders of RIPE was “volunteered” for the position by his colleagues in 1989. In 2014, Rob passed the role to Hans Petter, with the recommendation that he work with the community to develop a replacement procedure for future RIPE Chairs.
The new Chair is Mirjam Kühne, while the new Vice Chair is Niall O’Reilly.
Since the appointment of RIPE’s new MD Hans Petter Holen a few months ago the organisation had ended up with the slightly odd situation of its Chair and MD being the same person, which wasn’t ideal. A point which was touched on in the announcement email earlier today:
I would like to congratulate Mirjam Kühne and Niall O’Reilly on their selection as the new RIPE Chair and Vice Chair. Both Mirjam and Niall have a long history within RIPE; they are experienced chairs, they understand consensus, and they share the community’s expectations in terms of transparency and openness. I am sure they will continue to serve the community well in their new roles.
I am happy that I no longer have to occupy both the RIPE Chair and RIPE NCC Managing Director roles. I intend to pass the torch to Mirjam and Niall as soon as they are ready to assume their new RIPE responsibilities. I do not expect this will take very long.
As Managing Director, I am fully committed to giving the new leadership and the RIPE community the support it needs, just as my predecessors supported myself and Rob Blokzijl before me.
On behalf of the RIPE NCC, I would like to wish our new RIPE Chair and Vice Chair the very best.
Best of luck to both of them!
