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ICANN Reviews Program Update and Interim President and CEO Goal 11

3 October 2023
By
Xavier Calvez

Xavier Calvez

SVP, Planning & Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

Xavier Calvez is the Senior Vice President, Planning and Chief Financial Officer. He leads teams charged as the stewards of ICANN's public funds, financial accountability, and transparency. Xavier’s team manages finance, procurement, strategic and operational planning, implementation operations, and risk management to provide integrated operational support for responsible decision-making. 

Xavier brings two decades of international experience in France and the US in strategic planning, financial reporting, analysis, and modeling. Prior to joining ICANN in 2011, Xavier held progressive leadership positions in finance at Technicolor, ultimately serving as CFO for Technicolor Creative Services. In that role, he oversaw finance during a time of major transformation of systems implementation, reorganization, and process improvements for a diversified group of businesses across the world.

Xavier’s areas of expertise include strategic, operational and financial planning and reporting, auditing, tax compliance, corporate business development, mergers and acquisitions, and operational management. He has also worked with audit and financial clients out of the Paris and Miami offices of KPMG and Deloitte.

Fluent in English and French, Xavier earned a master’s in accounting and finance from Université du Maine Le Mans-Laval.

and
Theresa Swinehart

Theresa Swinehart

SVP, Global Domains & Strategy

Theresa Swinehart is the Senior Vice President of Global Domains and Strategy. In this role, she works with the community, contracted parties, stakeholders, and policymakers to ensure broad and inclusive engagement, consensus-based policymaking through ICANN’s multistakeholder model, and effective, accountable policy implementation. Her responsibilities include policy implementation, review operation, and cross-functional strategic initiatives such as ICANN’s compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. An expert in global Internet governance, Theresa also serves as co-deputy to the President and CEO. Her extensive industry experience, including nearly 20 years as a key contributor to ICANN’s growth and development, gives her a valuable perspective on how ICANN organization can work efficiently and collaboratively to better serve the global Internet community.

Theresa rejoined ICANN after three years as Executive Director of Global Internet Policy at Verizon Communications, where she specialized in emerging issues as well as stakeholder and policy engagement. Prior to this, she served as ICANN’s Vice President of Global and Strategic Partnerships, leading a team responsible for partnership reform, global engagement and outreach, and the participation in international forums. Before ICANN, Theresa was Director of Global E-Commerce at MCI, where she was responsible for such issues as Internet service provider liability, data protection, and participation in Internet-related forums, including the formation of ICANN. 

Theresa has a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of California, Davis, a graduate degree in international studies from the University of Vienna, Austria, and a juris doctorate from American University. She served on the Internet Society’s Board of Trustees and Internet Governance Forum’s Multistakeholder Advisory Committee. Theresa began her career in international human rights. She is fluent in German and is conversant in French.

The ICANN Reviews Program encompasses the management of Specific Reviews and Organizational Reviews, including the implementation of the recommendations they generate and the ongoing work to improve the reviews process. Specific and Organizational Reviews are required by the ICANN Bylaws. They are critical to maintaining a healthy ICANN multistakeholder model.

Reviews are conducted to assess how certain aspects of the ICANN ecosystem are performing, including how the ICANN organization (org), Board, and community fulfill commitments to global stakeholders. Each review is a multistakeholder effort in which the community or independent examiners make recommendations, the Board considers the recommendations, and the org implements those recommendations that are adopted by the Board. A new Interim President and CEO Goal 11 has been added for Fiscal Year 2024 which recognizes the importance of reviews. This goal is focused on the continued management of reviews, implementation of review team recommendations, and introducing refinements in the review process.

Over the course of numerous review cycles, challenges have emerged in conducting Specific and Organizational Reviews. Some of these challenges include the impact of having many overlapping reviews, difficulty recruiting review team members who are able to dedicate sufficient time, accurate resource planning in the absence of an established scope of work, and a large inventory of recommendations that can be unclear and difficult to implement.

Addressing these challenges has been an ICANN-wide effort and is a key focus of the ICANN Reviews Program. As part of this effort, the community-led Third Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT3) published two recommendations to address issues related to the function of reviews:

  • Recommendation 3.5 calls for the creation of the Holistic Review, a new Specific Review, to consider the effectiveness of the continuous improvement programs of Supporting Organizations (SOs), Advisory Committees (ACs), and the Nominating Committee, the accountability of SOs and ACs or their constituent parts to their members/constituencies, and whether the SOs, ACs, and the NomCom have a continuing purpose as they are currently constituted.
  • Recommendation 3.6 requires the evolution of Organizational Reviews into a Continuous Improvement Program for the SOs, ACs, and the NomCom.
  • The ICANN Board has directed that both the Holistic Review and the Continuous Improvement Program begin as pilots.

Additionally, ICANN org launched the Lifecycle of Reviews project in September 2022. It is an internal ICANN org project to improve the Specific Reviews process under the Reviews Program. This project is a continuation of work started by the ICANN Board via the Organizational Effectiveness Committee; the work was paused while ATRT3 was active.

The ICANN community's contribution to the Bylaws-mandated reviews is essential to the success of reviews and to ICANN's mission to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. ICANN org will provide further information about the Pilot Holistic Review, Continuous Improvement Program pilot, and Lifecycle of Reviews project as they develop, along with opportunities for community engagement and participation. Please join us during the ICANN78 Prep Week webinar on ICANN org implementation efforts and ICANN Reviews on 9 and 11 October 2023 to learn more.

We look forward to working with everyone across ICANN on this important effort.

Authors

Xavier Calvez

Xavier Calvez

SVP, Planning & Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
Xavier Calvez

Xavier Calvez

SVP, Planning & Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

Xavier Calvez is the Senior Vice President, Planning and Chief Financial Officer. He leads teams charged as the stewards of ICANN's public funds, financial accountability, and transparency. Xavier’s team manages finance, procurement, strategic and operational planning, implementation operations, and risk management to provide integrated operational support for responsible decision-making. 

Xavier brings two decades of international experience in France and the US in strategic planning, financial reporting, analysis, and modeling. Prior to joining ICANN in 2011, Xavier held progressive leadership positions in finance at Technicolor, ultimately serving as CFO for Technicolor Creative Services. In that role, he oversaw finance during a time of major transformation of systems implementation, reorganization, and process improvements for a diversified group of businesses across the world.

Xavier’s areas of expertise include strategic, operational and financial planning and reporting, auditing, tax compliance, corporate business development, mergers and acquisitions, and operational management. He has also worked with audit and financial clients out of the Paris and Miami offices of KPMG and Deloitte.

Fluent in English and French, Xavier earned a master’s in accounting and finance from Université du Maine Le Mans-Laval.

Theresa Swinehart

Theresa Swinehart

SVP, Global Domains & Strategy
Theresa Swinehart

Theresa Swinehart

SVP, Global Domains & Strategy

Theresa Swinehart is the Senior Vice President of Global Domains and Strategy. In this role, she works with the community, contracted parties, stakeholders, and policymakers to ensure broad and inclusive engagement, consensus-based policymaking through ICANN’s multistakeholder model, and effective, accountable policy implementation. Her responsibilities include policy implementation, review operation, and cross-functional strategic initiatives such as ICANN’s compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. An expert in global Internet governance, Theresa also serves as co-deputy to the President and CEO. Her extensive industry experience, including nearly 20 years as a key contributor to ICANN’s growth and development, gives her a valuable perspective on how ICANN organization can work efficiently and collaboratively to better serve the global Internet community.

Theresa rejoined ICANN after three years as Executive Director of Global Internet Policy at Verizon Communications, where she specialized in emerging issues as well as stakeholder and policy engagement. Prior to this, she served as ICANN’s Vice President of Global and Strategic Partnerships, leading a team responsible for partnership reform, global engagement and outreach, and the participation in international forums. Before ICANN, Theresa was Director of Global E-Commerce at MCI, where she was responsible for such issues as Internet service provider liability, data protection, and participation in Internet-related forums, including the formation of ICANN. 

Theresa has a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of California, Davis, a graduate degree in international studies from the University of Vienna, Austria, and a juris doctorate from American University. She served on the Internet Society’s Board of Trustees and Internet Governance Forum’s Multistakeholder Advisory Committee. Theresa began her career in international human rights. She is fluent in German and is conversant in French.

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