 Diane Schroeder, now Senior Vice President of HR, a long time ICANN employee. Diane, how did you first become involved with ICANN? In 2000, very early 2000, Louis Tutan, who was the first general counsel, had brunch with a friend of mine. We used to work together about six years before that. And he asked how I was doing and I had my own business and I had just had one of my larger clients relocate and I was looking for something to replace about 15% of my revenue. And he said, well do you think she'd come up 10 hours a week and help me set up the office? And I'm still there. Diane, what was it like in those early days? There weren't a lot of people around. At the time that I came on board, there were really only five people. The CEO, the general counsel and the first policy person who was also the CFO because in those days you had to have three different people as officers in the state of California and there were only three of them except for the receptionist. So our first policy officer was our CFO at that point. And it was a small suite that we were sub-leasing from USC. That was a USC building in Marina del Rey, right? In Marina del Rey. The early work that was done on this was all done by John Postel's staff. And so when we started up, they continued to do the work on a loan to ICANN until we could get funding. And then as we got funding, we hired people and we sent John Postel's staff back to USC. So Suzanne Wolfe was one of them, John Postel was one of them. There were a couple of other people who did things behind the scenes up at the USC offices. So we started in this small little corner and every time we needed space for quite a long time actually, more than 10 years, USC gave us another little chunk of space somewhere. And that's how we grew and eventually started bringing people on as the funding came in. You mentioned funding. How tight was money? Well, when I started, we had $75,000 in the bank. And part of what I was asked to do was set up a financial system because it was being run off a spreadsheet by Mike Roberts, the first CEO. And the very first thing I was asked to do, I was asked to build the test bed registrars for their very first invoices. But I had no clue what a test bed registrar was. It was like total Greek to me. And that was actually the very first invoices that went out that came in with funding for us came from that. And then as the registries contracts had been executed, we started invoicing them. We operated really the first two years off of four large corporate loans that we were given. And we paid two of them back at the end of the first year and two of them were extended into a second year. And by that point then we had enough funding coming on a regular basis from the registrars and the registries, as well as some donations from country codes and the RIRs that we were able to repay those and fund on our own. Were there ever times in those early days where you thought, you know what, we're not going to make it? Not as an organization as a whole. Not make payroll, yes. Because the cash flow wasn't steady because of the donation aspect of it and the timing between quarterly registrar billings and every other week payrolls. There were a couple of times with payrolls that I was working the phones going, hi, you told me you were going to send a check. When's the check coming? In fact, my very first international meeting was Melbourne in 2001. And I got on the plane and this man sat down next to me and said, are you going to the ICANN meeting? Because most of the people on the plane appeared to be. And I said yes. And he said, my name's Bruce Beckwith. And I burst out laughing because Bruce was with NSI in those days who was the largest registrar. And I said, you're going to love this. I'm diet shredder. I'm the woman that calls the budget about money all the time. I can do that all the way to Australia. So he was very nice. We struck up a friendship right there and then. But it was just, you know, to me, he was one of those people I needed to get the checks in from. So aside from money, what were the biggest problems that you were facing? Too much work and not enough people, which, you know, we still face. But in those days, when you had a very, very small staff, you did everything. I mean, Louis was our webmaster, our general counsel, ran our phone system. You know, I basically ran the meetings, ran HR and ran finance for three or four years all at the same time until we really had enough funding in to kind of go to the next level. That was probably our biggest problem. There was a lot of time just trying to establish legitimacy and being challenged by people that didn't really want to see us succeed because they had their own agendas in the space, whether it be someone like Verisign who saw us in those days as a big threat or the civil society groups who did not see us as the path they wanted to see taken. People in public forums who were very, very contentious about a lot of the issues in the early days. So there was always this constant criticism in the early days. So it sounds like what you're saying is that the very legitimacy of ICANN wasn't there from day one. It grew. It grew. Absolutely not. And it really took a long time. In some ways, it's still one of those things that we struggle with because we're such a unique organization and have such a unique niche. Going through the transition period, there were definitely people who questioned legitimacy at that point still, but usually because of their agendas, not because of what ICANN itself was doing. How much of a hassle was it? And how much were people scrambling in the context of the very sudden and unexpected death of John Postel? He died before I came. So I don't have as much context about that. The piece that I know in the early days, we did get a lot of people who purported to speak for what John would have done. Oh, John would not have done it that way. I know one of the early conversations was when John Crane joined us was about his title because John Postel... John Crane, now one of our security people. Correct. John Postel would have carried the CTO title, as I understand it. And they proposed to give that to Crane and people were like, oh no, nobody can have that. That would have been John's title. So there was some of that type of talk around John Postel when I came on board. But I don't really know how they dealt with the other question. Was there a point, Diane, or maybe there wasn't? Maybe it was just a gradual sort of thing. Was there a point where you thought the ball was rolling? We now have a funding model figured out. We're bound to grow. Was there such a point? So I think one of the turning points for me in understanding the future was when Stuart Lynn, who was our second CEO, proposed pretty much out of the blue on his own initiative that I can do what they called evolution and reform at that time. And that was in 2002. He presented a plan to the community about, okay, we've tried it for a little while and we need to reorganize. And that was when we moved some things like, it went from the DNSO to the GNSO and it went from being an outside organization to one that was supported in-house where we really got the basic structure that we're in today. I think the fact that it didn't make us fail as an organization, because when you talk about changing what you're doing, you open the door to people who want to take it apart, right? But instead it reformed in a way that actually let us down the paths we're at today to where we've gotten to. So I think that was one big turning point. But this isn't just a regular startup. This is an organization whose primary role was the organization coordination of the internet's addressing system. Correct. But there were people out there who wanted to see that done differently. And mostly because they had a commercial interest that they wanted to see succeed. Or, you know, sometimes they had a personal agenda with believing that tech should be done a different way that we were doing the addressing. And I really think that with what Stuart did at that point, was a big risk for the organization, because if you open the door and you go out into community consultation to agree upon what your new format should be, it's just as easy to say no format. You shouldn't be here. But it really did. I think it cemented us through the next period. Shortly after that, when Paul Toomey joined, then he proposed the new funding model that took us from the $3 to $5 million type of a budget up to $15 and then up to $25. And that's really when we were starting to be able to resource well, to be able to support the work that we were trying to do. How much concern was there internally about the U.S. government specifically and all other governments generally? I don't think it was concern as much as it was trying to have people on both sides understand what an appropriate role would be for them. With governments, they kind of want all or nothing. That's what they're used to. And with a lot of the people involved on either the commercial side or the civil society registrant side of things, they didn't want government interference in it. And so the whole subject of the GAC and their role was pretty contentious with a lot of the various groups in the early stages. The fact that in the bylaws it has the provision about GAC advice needing to be accepted by the board sounded a little bit to people like, well, the government's having it. The governments are used by their very nature. They're used to having the final word. They're used to being the voice. All of a sudden in ICANN, they are a voice but not the only voice. Correct. Well, in the early days, just writing the GAC communique used to take hours. In Bucharest, the GAC communique went until like 2 in the morning one night because you're having all of these individuals, even though it was a much smaller group at that point, have to agree upon what the language and something is like. And that's very unique in the government world. You know, you have the United Nations where they each have a vote, but they don't come out with one document in the end. So to have any group of governments, all of whom have different needs and represent different constituencies, so to speak, come together and issue one statement as something I don't think you see anywhere else. Well, you're hitting on an area that I was wondering about because the multi-stakeholder model is such a weird, funky creature. I mean, it's just not well understood by anybody who's not participated in it. What kind of task was it to convey understanding of this unique model to not just governments but everyone else? Well, I really think that we still struggle with that. I think it's something that we take a little bit for granted the people that work with it all the time, not just within ICANN but within the constituencies, about how strange it appears to people outside the world. And I think that I saw a chat passing this morning from some of the conversations at the GAC today where somebody's comment was we need to do a better job of educating some of the newer GAC members on what it is that we really do. You have governments in particular where the people that come to the meetings will change as governments change. You don't necessarily have the same person representing a country for a long period of time. And you may get a minister one time and you may get a lower level person the next time and they may have a complete different understanding of what the multi-stakeholder model is and what you actually can do within it without the consultations that go on. So I think we still struggle a bit with how we explain it clearly from the perspective of the person looking into it because that perspective is very different among the various groups. There are some people who honestly believe we're just here to make the money and then there are a whole lot of people that have a much different... You have the people that have the mission of keeping the internet open and keeping it stable and so you have that tension there. The governments, the control, the money and then the people with really the passion for the mission. Quite a message of interest. What was a two-part question? What was the greatest challenge in the early days? You mentioned the funding, perhaps it was that, perhaps it was something else. And fast forward to today and what is the greatest challenge for the organization today? I think in the beginning it was not getting distracted by all of the forces that were really kind of trying to bring us down as an organization and trying to take away any of the legitimacy that we had established because we would get attacked, so to speak, on multiple forces. There were various players in that world who were funding people behind the scenes that weren't obvious. Some of the user groups in the early days had members that had been funded by some of the commercial interests to come and really raise questions from all angles about ICANN and what you're doing. Today I think it is trying to be too many things to too many people. We only have so many resources. We only have so many... so much bandwidth mentally. So as we get into this age where things are very, very complex in the world and you just take the data privacy issues alone, that can really absorb a lot of time and resources dealing with that. At the same time, we're looking at people who want the next round of the new GTLDs to come out. We're doing the KSK rollover. We're looking at all of these various pieces and how do you prioritize it so that your resources are really helping you to get to the best end results. So what I'm hearing you say is it sounds like sometimes we need to learn how to say no. We need to learn how to say no or we need to learn how to make the participants in the multi-stakeholder model understand that they may have a really good point and a useful point of view, but that isn't something we can necessarily tackle today. Let me ask you, let's talk about you personally. 20 years you've been there. 17. Seeing an amazing transition in the organization. Six CEOs. Six CEOs. Why are you still there? The people. That's easily the very first thing and I am never bored. So anytime I've been at that point where you get a job and you think, it's time to get something else because I'm getting a little too comfortable. I can't offer me that opportunity because the organization has evolved. And so I supported the board for four years. I wanted to change my pace. That was a very challenging role time-wise. You've got board members all over the world. You've got committee meetings at 4 a.m. in the morning. We're up my time. And I was getting older and I wanted to come my pace back. So I looked around and there was an opening in the organization so I stayed with the organization. Every time I've needed to do that I've been lucky enough that there's been something that I can that has fit my needs as well as me fitting the organization's needs. But the real thing is the people. I've met the most fascinating, smart, nice people through this whole process. I've met, you know, I'm a milkman's daughter. My mom worked in retail. And I've met the president of Estonia and the president of Uruguay and Bill Clinton. Who thought? I've met people who do this out of passion. I've met people who are multimillionaires because of the businesses that they've built around it. And there's really not much difference and distinction between them. We're really fairly classless as an organization and that really appeals to me. And people have a lot of passion about it for better or for worse sometimes. Let me ask you a softball as a senior VP of HR. Yep. Is the organization as committed to the people as Diane Schroeder herself is? Oh, I absolutely believe it. And I think it's one reason that we continue to be a fairly successful organization people-wise is that even if people don't really understand what we do when they come in, the passion that we have, as well as the commitment of the organization to people in general, as we developed over the years as an organization, most of our funding went to our outside work. If you didn't do the outside work well, you didn't need an inside structure. So we didn't build up HR or finance IT. Well, we got to the point where Fadi joined us and we doubled in size in 18 months. And we went from about 130 to 260 staff. It broke. It broke that foundation that didn't exist. But Fadi had the foresight to say, okay, I need to give you the resources. And he did. He funded HR, went from four people to I of 15 now. Finance the same. IT the same. By doing that, he showed a commitment to people. Yarn has the same commitment to people. Our people come first. We try to do what we can to help. I really truly believe we are an ICANN family. And we've been able to keep that feeling no matter how spread out and diverse we are. And it's one of the things that people really focus on. I can't tell you why we've been successful at doing it, but we don't want to lose that aspect of it as we do the work that we have to do and the work changes. I read Magazine or the Clinton administration official who arguably could be considered the father of ICANN. When I post the question to Magazine or about what do you see as the greatest risk to ICANN moving forward, he said something to the effect of, if ICANN becomes very self-impressed or if it becomes too bureaucratic and too big, what do you think about that? Oh, I think that's definitely true. I mean, I feel very much like if we lose the passion, which is what I think you do if you become that type of an organization, I think that you will lose a lot of the committed staff. It's a very hard job and it's a very hard job at any level that you have. It's very fast-paced. It's very diverse, so you have to be thinking about a lot of aspects at any given time. It's a lot of different agendas coming in and you have to try to balance those, and you have to really be able to see the big picture. And there are people that don't fit well with the organization. They will come in and they will find that it's just not for them. And I admire the fact that sometimes they identify that early enough on, and they're lost for a little bit and usually either through mentoring in the department or getting involved with somebody in one of the other departments, to see where they fit into the picture. And I hope that will keep us from doing that. We do have to find a way, however, to balance the tremendous pressure to be everything to everybody against limited resources and people who need to have lives, so to speak. It isn't the organization that it was when I joined when you had to do everything 24-7. And I think that we're still struggling how to find that balance. Very good. Diane Schroeder, one of the first employees of ICANN. Thank you very much for taking the time. You're welcome, Brad.