Biographies
The management team
Marc Van Wesemael, General Manager
Marc Van Wesemael has an MBA from Lessius Management School (Antwerp) in collaboration with Northwestern University (USA) and a degree in electronic engineering from the University of Ghent. He has worked in the telecom and software industries as a consultant and as a manager in software engineering, general sales and marketing. For ten years he was the Managing Director of not-for-profit DNS Belgium, the registry for .be.
Bart Foutrel, Finance Manager
Bart Foutrel has a masters degree in business sciences from Lessius Hogeschool, where he focused on finance and insurance plus accountancy and tax law. During his studies, he worked as an accountant at MENSURA, an insurance company. After graduation he worked as an adviser on Global Compliance Service at PricewaterhouseCoopers before joining EURid in early 2008.
Peter Janssen, Technical Manager
Peter Janssen has a masters degree in computer science from the University of Leuven. He joined the Belgian registry for .be in 2000 in the guise of technical director and was responsible for the domain’s liberalisation in December 2000.
Giovanni Seppia, External Relations Manager
Giovanni Seppia previously worked at ICANN as European Regional Liaison. Prior to that, he was General Manager at CENTR. He has also served as head of external relations for the Italian Registry (ITT CNR) and has three years of experience in various roles at the European Commission.
Herman Sobrie, Legal Manager
Herman Sobrie studied law and notary studies at several Belgian universities. He worked as an attorney at the Bar of Gent, Belgium, until 1983. Since then he has held positions as legal counsel with Elsevier, Campbell and Siemens.
Els Verstappen, Human Resources Manager
Els Verstappen held a variety of HR roles at Scarlet, a telecommunications company, before joining EURid. Most recently, as HR Business Advisor, she was responsible for HR support for line management, selection and recruitment, among other things. Before working at Scarlet she was employed at KPN Belgium and at a European non-governmental organisation.
The EURid Board of directors
Pierre Verbaeten, Chairman of the board
Pierre Verbaeten is Chairman of the Computer Science department of the Catholic University of Leuven, where he lectures on networking and distributed systems. He also leads the DistriNet research group, which conducts basic and applied research in computer networks, security, middleware, multi-agent systems and embedded systems. In 1989 Mr Verbaeten became the first manager of the .be registry, which was transferred to the not-for-profit organisation DNS Belgium on January 1, 2000.
Marko Bonac, Director of the board
Marko Bonac received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics (1981) and a masters in computer science (1988) from the University of Ljubljana. Between 1981 and 1992 he worked as a researcher and project leader in the field of computer networks. Since 1992 he has been the Director of Arnes, the Academic and Research Network of Slovenia, which is also the registry for the Slovenian top-level domain, .si.
Danny Aerts, Director of the board
Danny Aerts is the Managing Director of the Swedish Internet Infrastructure Foundation (IIS), the registry for the .se top-level domain. A native of the Netherlands, Mr Aerts moved to Sweden in the mid 1990s. In 2006 he left his position as CEO at Swedish web portal Spray to join IIS. Mr Aerts has also been employed at several telecom companies, including Unisource Mobile, Telia and PTT Telecom. He graduated cum laude from Utrecht University, where he studied economic geography.
Domenico Laforenza, Director of the board
Dr. Domenico Laforenza is the head of nic.it, the registry for Italy’s .it top-level domain. He is also the Director of the Institute for Informatics and Telematics of the Italian National Research Council in Pisa. Between 2003 and 2007 Dr. Laforenza was a member of the Next Generation Grid Expert Group, which was selected by the European Commission to define the priorities of future research in the Grid technologies sector. He has also been a consultant to various EU Member research agencies in Austria, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Netherlands. He holds a doctoral degree in Computer Science from the University of Pisa.
Tomáš Maršálek, Director of the board
Mr Maršálek is a chairman of CZ.NIC, the registry for the .cz top-level domain, and the Managing Director of the Czech Neutral Internet eXchange node (NIX.CZ). After graduating from the Czech Technical University in Prague with a masters degree in radio electronic science, he began his professional career at AT&T. Mr Marsalek is a cofounder of GTS, the biggest alternative telecommunications operator in the Czech Republic. He also helped establish the IP network in Central and Eastern Europe on behalf of British Telecom.
Philippe de Buck, Member of the Strategic Committee
Philippe de Buck received a doctorate in law from the University of Leuven. After a post-graduate course in tax studies at the Ecole Supériure de Sciences Fiscales (ICHEC) in Brussels, he joined Agoria, the Belgian multisectoral federation for the technology industry. There he filled various functions until 2001, when he left the CEO position at the federation to join Business Europe in the role of Secretary General. Mr de Buck is also a member of the board of directors for both ING Belgium and BASF Antwerp and sits on the advisory board of the European Policy Center.
Michiel Leenaars, Member of the Strategic Committee
Michiel A.G.J. Leenaars is Director of Strategy at NLnet foundation, a Netherlands-based charity investor in technology, and Director of the Netherlands chapter of the Internet Society. Mr Leenaars also holds a number of board positions, including Vice Chair of OpenDoc Society and Secretary of the board of Gridforum.nl. He is a policy advisor for the Netherlands National Computing Facilities foundation, which is a subsidiary of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. Mr Leenaars has a background in Physics at Technische Universiteit Eindhoven and Arts at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.