John Crain

John is responsible for leading ICANN organization (org)’s efforts to improve knowledge about the identifiers ICANN helps coordinate and disseminate this information to the Internet community. He is also responsible for oversight of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions.

A member of the org executive team, John works with staff and the community to enable and enhance capabilities that improve the overall security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet’s identifier systems and associated infrastructures. He also represents ICANN in operational and technical dialogues and forums to ensure the community’s engagement with these programs.

Prior to his time at ICANN org, John worked as part of the executive management team at RIPE NCC in Amsterdam. RIPE NCC is the regional Internet registry (RIR) that provides Internet resource allocations for Europe and surrounding areas. John has been directly involved in the administration of Internet identifiers since his start at RIPE NCC in 1995 and has worked in all areas of Internet Protocol (IP) address administration. John also has extensive experience in Domain Name System (DNS) administration and managing Internet infrastructure services. Before becoming involved in Internet administration, John worked as a design engineer in composite materials research and development. In that role, John was also responsible for local area networking of computer aided design systems and for writing and developing custom software applications.