Mr Brahima Sanou was elected Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau by the Plenipotentiary Conference in October 2010 in Guadalajara, Mexico. He took office on 1 January 2011. A national of Burkina Faso, Mr Sanou has more than thirty years experience in the telecommunication and ICT sector, both at a regional and at an international level. During his ten years as Head of the ITU Regional Office for Africa and Liaison Officer to the African Union and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), he contributed to the development of the African telecommunication/ICT sector and played a key role in the organization of the Connect Africa Summit, held in Kigali, Rwanda in October 2007 and in its follow-up. Prior to working for the ITU, Mr Sanou held several high-level positions in the Posts and Telecommunication Services in Burkina Faso. Mr Sanou has served as Head of Burkina Faso’s delegation to various international and national conferences and as Governor representing 15 African countries on the Board of INTELSAT as well as representing his country in the ITU Council for almost 10 years. He holds an Engineering degree from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications (ENST) in Paris and a post-graduate diploma from the Centre for Financial, Economic and Banking Studies in Paris.

 

 

 

H.E. Group Captain Anudith Nakornthap took office as Minister of Information and Communication Technology of Thailand on 9 August 2011. Prior to taking his political career, H.E. Anudith Nakornthap was a distinguished pilot serving in the Royal Thai Air Force. He was repeatedly awarded for his outstanding performance and academic achievements while in the Air Force. Although H.E. Anudith Nakornthap became well known as a politician in Thailand when he was elected as Member of the House of Representatives from 2007-2011, his role in the Parliament, in fact, began as early as in 2005 when he dually served as a political secretary for Minister of Defense and advisor to Minister of Agriculture and Cooperatives from 2005-2006. He was also actively involved in the energy sector while he was a member of the Committee on Energy of the House of Representatives in 2007-2011, during which he was appointed as Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Renewable Energy Promotion of the House of Representatives.

 

 

 

Ms Jirawan Boonperm has a long successful career in the field of statistics and indicators. She was serving as Director General of National Statistical Office before being appointed as Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Information and Communication Technology of Thailand in October 2010. Ms Jirawan Boonperm contributed significantly to improving the production and management social and economic statistics through censuses and surveys. She played a key role in the development of Thailand’s national statistical system including the amendment of Statistical Act 2007. She was granted a range of Royal Thai Orders and Decorations and was also awarded for being an outstanding government officer of National Statistical Office.

 

 

 

Dr. Cosmas Zavazava (PH.D, LLM, MA, MBA, BBA, Diploma Telecommunications and Systems Engineering) works in the Telecommunication Development Bureau of the ITU. He is a widely quoted author on information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D), least developed countries and small island developing states, emergency telecommunications and climate change. He has developed and implemented a host of ICT projects across the globe. He has designed and deployed wireless solutions for development, risk disaster reduction, and disaster management including early warning and systems for disaster response. Cosmas has a track record for fund raising. He is a trained multilateral negotiator who has represented his government as well as ITU in international trade, environment, climate change and intellectual property negotiations. He worked as a senior government official heading his government’s Telecommunications Agency, and served as a senior diplomat before joining ITU. He also taught MBA classes in areas of business strategy, Management Information Systems and finance at Nottingham Trent University.

 

 

Ms Lina V. Castro is the Assistant Secretary General and con-currently the Officer-In-Charge Secretary General of the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), the highest policy-making and coordinating body on statistical matters in the Philippines. Her academic background includes degrees on Statistics and Demography at the University of the Philippines, and a post graduate certificate on Social Research for Development at the University of London, United Kingdom. She has served as resource person/speaker in various local and international seminars/workshops/fora and trainings on Gender Statistics, Millennium Development Goals, Education and Health Statistics, Governance Statistics, Disability Statistics, and Social Statistics. She also serves as Chair/Co-Chair or member of various subject-matter Inter-agency Committees and Technical Committees, e.g. Inter-Agency Expert Group on Gender Statistics, Washington Group on Disability Statistics, Poverty, Population and Housing, Health and Nutrition and Multi-Sectoral Committee on Human International Development Commitments.  

 

 

 

Salam Yamout is the National ICT Strategy Coordinator at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers since July 2010.  Per such, she handles the innovation and ICT portfolios for the Prime Minister Office.  Before that, Salam was Program Manager for Corporate Social Responsibility at Cisco since 2005.  Salam has 20 years experience in the development and management of ICT systems for both the private and public sectors, the formulation of ICT Strategies and ICT for Development (ICT4D) programs.  She has consulted with the EU, UN, ESCWA, the Ministry of Administrative Reform, and the Ministry of Economy. Salam holds an MBA from ESCP-EAP, Paris / Ecole Supérieure des Affaires, Beirut in 2005.  Salam also holds a M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Arizona (Tucson, USA) in 1987 and a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Valparaiso University (Indiana, USA) in 1985. A serial social entrepreneur, Ms Yamout is the founder of Women in IT, the Lebanese Broadband Stakeholders Group, and the Lebanon Chapter of the Internet Society.  She also established the Beirut Internet Exchange Point (BIX) in 2008.  She is Secretary General of the MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Business Plan Competition, a member of the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections, the Lebanese Transparency Association, and the Order of Engineers of Beirut.  She is a certified PMP with the Project Management Institute. 

 

 

 

Dr Krishna Oolun holds an electronic engineering degree from the University of Mauritius and a Masters and PhD in Communication engineering from the University of Manchester UK, as well as a MBA in Information Technology Management from the University of Leicester, UK. He is a Chartered Engineer of the UK Council of Engineers and member of the IEEE Communication Society, USA. Dr Krishna Oolun is presently the Chief Executive of the ICT Authority of Mauritius, the National Regulatory Authority. He has been working with the Regulator for the last 10 years and was involved in the drafting of the White Paper in Telecommunication in 1997 following the commitment of Mauritius to liberalise the sector. He has then contributed in the elaboration of the National IT Strategic Plan of Mauritius in 1998, the National Spectrum Management Policy for Mauritius in 2002, the National Numbering Policy in 2003, the National Telecom Policy of 2004, the elaboration of the National ICT Strategic Plan for the years 2007-2011 for Mauritius and the preparation of the National Broadband Policy 2012-2020. Dr Oolun has a wide experience in Telecom sector planning with research interest in the regulatory reform modelling and has over 40 international publications in the field of Communication engineering, amongst others.

 

 

 

Ms Haishan Fu is the Director of the Statistics Division of United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). Previously, she had held positions as Chief of Statistics at the Human Development Report Office of United Nations Development Progrmme (UNDP), Senior Research Associate at the Guttmacher Institute in New York and Population Affairs Officer at the United Nations Population Division. She had also worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania and Visiting Research Collaborator at the Office of Population Research, Princeton University.  She is a former member of the Executive Committee of IAOS, and a member of the Advisory Committee on Ethics of ISI and the Statistical Advisory Panel of the Human Development Report (HDR) of UNDP. She has published a number of research papers in leading academic journals, and contributed as core team member, team leader or executive editor to major international and regional reports. A native of China, Ms Fu holds a doctoral degree in Demography from Princeton University and a bachelor degree in Economics from Peking University. 

 

 

 

Dr Maitree Wasuntiwongse is Advisor to the Director General of the  National Statistics Office (NSO) of Thailand. He has been Director of the Institute for Learning Development (a non-profit Organization) since 2007. Dr Wasuntiwongse has worked as a consultant and programme manager of many projects both for the Government and the private sector. In 2006, he was consultant under the project run by UNDP and the NSO, on the “Development of Thailand’s National Statistical System Master Plan”. Another project that he worked closely with the NSO was the “Programme for the Development of Thailand National Statistical System” during the years 2007-2009. Mr Wasuntiwongse received his Ph.D. in Engineering Management in 1984 from the University of Missouri-Rolla, Missouri, United States.

 

 

 

Susan Teltscher is Head of the ICT Data and Statistics Division of the International Telecommunication Union’s Telecommunication Development Bureau. Her Division is responsible for the collection, harmonization, analysis and dissemination of information and communication technology (ICT) statistics worldwide, and for the production of analytical reports on global and regional trends in ICT. Before joining the ITU in July 2008, she was Chief of the ICT Policy and Analysis Unit, ICT and E-Business Branch, of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Geneva. Ms Teltscher received her Ph.D. in Economic Geography in 1992 from the University of Washington (Seattle, United States).

 

 

 

Iñigo Herguera is Licenciado in Economics by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (1987), has a Diploma in European Studies by the Universitaet des Saarlandes (Germany, 1988) and a PhD in Economics from the European University Institute (Dept. of Economics, 1994). He is an Associate Professor in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and currently Works as Director for the Studies and Statistics Department of the telecommunications regulator in Spain,  the Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones. He has a number of publications in international refereed journals. His research field is Industrial Organization, anti-trust and regulation. He has been consultant in relevant cases on regulation of the telecommunications industry and has been involved in several anti-trust cases. He has worked in consultancy for big electricity and telecommunications firms, as well as for the European Commission.

 

 

 

Ms Esperanza Magpantay is the Senior Statistician of the ICT Data and Statistics division (IDS) of the ITU, where she has been working since December 2000. She is responsible for the collection and dissemination of ICT statistics particularly through the Yearbook of Statistics, World Telecom/ICT Indicators Database and the ICT Eye. Ms Magpantay is the coordinator of the ITU Expert Group on Telecom/ICT Indicators (EGTI) and the ITU’s representative at the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development and its Steering Committee. Before joining ITU she worked for 7 years at the International Labour Office (ILO) in Geneva as a statistical officer. She has a degree in Statistics from the University of the Philippines.

 

 

 

Mr Yeo Tiong Yeow is currently the Deputy Director in Policy and Competition Development Group in the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (“IDA”), primarily responsible in the formulation and reviews of major economic regulation and competition policies, as well as enforcement of these policies to promote and maintain sustainable competition in the telecom and postal sectors. Mr Yeo joined the then Telecommunication Authority of Singapore (the former IDA) in 1998 and has been in IDA since. He was also seconded to the Competition Commission of Singapore (“CCS”) for 2 years from October 2007 to September 2009, and was responsible in leading teams in investigating alleged anti-competitive practices and conducting market studies in other economic sectors such as real estate, education, retail and healthcare sectors, including advising other government agencies on competition-related matters.

 

 

 

Paul Hamilton is the Managing Director of Hamilton Research, a specialist provider of research, analysis and cartographic services and publisher of Africa Bandwidth Maps. He has been an African Telecom Analyst for nearly fifteen years, and has worked as a consultant for over ten years. Prior to the that, he was the Telecoms Research Manager at World Markets Research Centre. Mr Hamilton studied Geography and International Politics at Keele University in the UK.

 

 

 

 

 

Rita Vala works at ANACOM, the Portuguese National Regulatory Authority (NRA) for electronic communications,  in Lisbon, at the Information and Consumers department. She works on issues such as the definition and analysis of indicators for the assessment of broadband services and next generation networks, gives support by providing information to other entities (e.g. NRAs, BEREC, ITU, OECD, etc.). She is a member of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) - Benchmark Expert working group and takes part in the European Commission’s working groups related with statistics and indicators. She holds a degree in Finances and has a postgraduate degree in Public Regulation from Coimbra University, in Portugal.

 

 

 

Eun-Ju Kim, Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, ITU

Dr. Nancy J. Hafkin has been working to promote information and communications technology in Africa and other developing areas, with particular emphasis on gender, for more than thirty years. She was chief of research for 12 years in the program for women and development at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in Addis Ababa — the first international women and development program in the world — and went on to head the ECA program to Promote Information Technology for Development in Africa, where she worked to establish the African Information Society Initiative (AISI) -- eight years before WSIS). The program worked to set up the first electronic communication networks in a number of African countries and went on to convince African governments of the importance of the Internet. In 2000 the Association for Progressive Communications established the annual Nancy Hafkin Communications Prize competition. She has written widely on information technology, gender and international development, including Gender, Information Technology, and. Developing Countries: An Analytic Study, Cinderella or Cyberella: Empowering Women in the Information Society and Engendering the Knowledge Society: Measuring Women’s Participation. Most recently she contributed the chapter on gender issues to the World Web Foundation volume edited by George Sadowsky, Accelerating Development Using the Web: Empowering Poor and Marginalized Populations. Nancy has a Ph.D. in History (Africa) from Boston University. She is an Executive Board member of the international NGO PACT Inc. and serves on the advisory boards of a number of initiatives to encourage the use of the Internet in Africa. She is the mother of a son and a daughter and the grandmother of Dameon Berhanu, age 4. In 2012 she was in the first group of honorees inducted into the Internet Society Hall of Fame, in the category of “Global Connectors.”

 

 

 

Sonia Jorge is Research and Consulting Director at Pyramid Research, and responsible for Pyramid’s global regulatory and policy consulting practice. Ms Jorge has over 20 years of experience as an international consultant in communications policy and regulation, gender and development and has worked extensively with public and private clients in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. Her recent work has focused on ICT policy and regulation, strategic planning for the ICT sector, national ICT policy and program development, new regulatory frameworks (to address competition, interconnection, cost-based pricing, sector development, licensing, convergence), market analysis and business strategies, universal access in the context of development, rural networks and infrastructure planning, gender analysis and awareness in the process of planning for information and communication technologies. Recent projects include: Pyramid’s research initiative on mobile applications for development in emerging markets; the development of strategic plans, the preparation of rural connectivity development policy and universal access strategies for African regulators; extensive market analysis and recommendations for new legal and regulatory frameworks in several countries across emerging markets. Ms Jorge has published and frequently presents at international conferences, focusing on regulatory and policy issues as well as the intersection of gender and ICT. Ms Jorge holds a Masters in Public Policy (Tufts University) and a BA/BS in Economics and Business Finance (University of Massachusetts). She is fluent in Portuguese, Spanish and English.

 

 

 

Nidhi Tandon is originally from East Africa (Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya) and is now based in Toronto, Canada where she works as an independent development consultant. Nidhi is a social activist, animator and writer working with women and with marginalized communities to raise their voices in a digitized world.  For the past twenty years she has been specialising in digital media, information and communication technologies and applications that enhance women’s livelihoods in developing countries. Most recently she authored a global report for the International Telecommunications Union (A Bright Future in ICTs for a New Generation of Women) and compiled the content for the Girls in ICT Portal.