Today the New Zealand lawyer Peter Dengate Thrush, has been elected unanimously as the new Chairman of the Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, taking over the role from Vint Cerf.
 
Peter Dengate Thrush is a barrister practicing in civil litigation and specializing in intellectual property, competition and Internet law. After the the election he said:

"I am delighted that my colleagues have placed their confidence in me for this challenging and important role," Dengate Thrush said.

On the ICANN website one can read: "Peter Dengate Thrush has been involved in ICANN since its inception. As a member of the Boston Working Group, he provided comment in 1998 on the early drafts of the ICANN bylaws, and he co-chaired one of the pre-formation meetings of the Intellectual Property Constituency in Wellington, New Zealand.

He has been President of InternetNZ, a leader of the country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) community in the formation of the ccNSO, and was selected as a board member after an international vote of ccTLD managers in the ccNSO in December 2004. He is currently on the President’s Strategy, Board Finance, Board Governance, and Executive committees.
 
More information and biographical data on Peter Denegate Thrush can be found on the ICANN website as well.