Form for W3C Advisory Committee to nominate individuals (W3C Member-only) | W3C Board of Directors skills and expectations (public page)
This page lists publicly nominations, as they are made, for the election for the Board of Directors of W3C, Incorporated. Each person has been nominated by at least one W3C Member.
The W3C Membership elects a majority of the voting seats of the Board of Directors of W3C, Incorporated, to bring a diverse multi-stakeholder perspective from the W3C Membership. For this election, W3C Members will fill seven seats.
Timeline:
The election results are to be announced publicly after the Consortium Member Meeting.
The following nominations have been made (listed in random order):
See below for additional video statements.
The following nomination statements have been made (listed in random order):
Jaunita Flessas is nominated by College Board.
I have spent my career building bridges between emerging technology, human rights, and global digital standards. I am an attorney and technologist, the founder of Empower Accessibility in Melbourne, Australia, and a longtime contributor to W3C, having served on the Accessibility Guidelines, ARIA, and Accessible Platform Architectures Working Groups. Before founding my practice, I led enterprise accessibility at Navy Federal Credit Union, the world's largest credit union, where I represented the organization at W3C and learned firsthand what it takes for a large member to justify, sustain, and get real value from its membership.
I am standing for the Board of Directors because this is a governance moment for W3C. The organization has successfully re-formed itself as an independent nonprofit; it has not yet finished becoming one. Financial sustainability, audit-ready reporting, coherent staffing and performance structures, and bylaws that actually work are important for positioning the organization to meet the demands of tomorrow. The Board's job is to set direction, exercise real oversight, and give management honest feedback, including when it is uncomfortable. That is work I know how to do.
I bring three things to it.
First, legal and governance depth. I am a lawyer with experience writing policies and navigating governance for organizations — contracts, employment questions that cross jurisdictions, intellectual property, and risk. W3C's open governance questions and obligations spanning multiple countries are some of the kinds of problems I have spent my career untangling.
Second, I know how to get things done in large and complex organizations, having both PMP and SAFe certifications. Operational excellence is a practice: clear goals, defensible finances, measurable performance, and processes that serve the people using them, supported by a culture in which staff, members, and the broader community trust one another and move in the same direction. Members and donors will invest in W3C's future when its finances are transparent, audited, and public, and practices clear. That must become routine.
Third, the member's perspective. Membership is W3C's lifeblood, and members renew when they can see the value. I have been the internal advocate making that case inside a large organization, so I want the Board to treat membership strategy, tiers, pricing, participation models, and a value proposition that’s attractive to members as core strategy.
Beyond all of this, the web itself is at an inflection point. Artificial intelligence is reshaping how the web is built, used, and governed, and W3C must lead with clarity, pragmatism, and a bold, values-driven vision rather than react from behind. And as a director based in Australia, I will push for truly global participation, from meeting structures, remote options, and cost models that let the whole web community contribute and exclude no one.
The future of the web depends not just on technical excellence, but on leadership that is innovative, ethical, and people-first. I am fully committed to representing W3C well, to showing up, and to the hard choices ahead. I am ready to help W3C meet this moment.
Daniel Glazman is nominated by Google LLC.
I've known glazou for years, as a member/chair of the CSSWG. In my experience, Daniel is sharp, analytical, and excellent at getting to the heart of matters. I think he'll be a valuable Board member during this time of exceptional crisis in W3C, and help us steer the community back to the position of pre-eminence it deserves.
Hello. I am Daniel Glazman (aka glazou), CTO Software of the Thales Group, a global technology leader with more than 85,000 employees in the markets of defense, aerospace, cyber and digital. In my role there, I deal with software tech strategy, finances, recruitment, engineering practices, and of course standardization. We're particularly active in verifiable credentials, biometrics, cybersecurity, embeddable rendering engines, vector graphics, post quantum crypto, trustable and verifiable AI, and much more.
Before that, I spent 30+ years deep in Web standards for instance at Electricité de France, Netscape, Samsung Research or my former own company Disruptive Innovations.
I authored, edited or contributed to many W3C Recommendations and Specs, from HTML4 to WebExtensions through CSS and EPUB3 plus so many drafts and Notes. After 11 years in the Group, I was appointed Co-chair of the CSS Working Group in 2008 and served in that position until 2015. I also contributed to the Process Group and was very active during AC Meetings, often going beyond the technical perspective to discuss Process, finances, revenue opportunities, legal status of W3C, or cooperation/merge with other Standard Bodies.
W3C is its Membership plus some dashes of spice. Members propose new ideas, accept compromises, and mobilize significant resources to bring proposals to fruition and implement them. An essential mission of W3C should be to provide them with a highly efficient and sustainable organization.
My personal philosophy is that problems cannot be solved if they're not discussed beforehand and that rugs are not meant to hide dust underneath. W3C needs strategy, focused business development, sharp finance management, transparency and collaboration.
If I wish to give back to W3C what it has given me, the Board of Directors is likely the ideal place to do so, now that I hold a leadership position at a major international company. I am therefore candidating for a seat at the Board of Directors of W3C; my employer Thales supports that candidacy and will provide the means for my participation if I am elected. Should you honor me with such a seat, you can count on me to keep pushing W3C and the Web forward.
Koichi Moriyama is nominated by NTT, Inc.
NTT is delighted to nominate Dr. Koichi Moriyama of NTT DOCOMO, INC., an affiliate of NTT, for election to the Board of Directors of W3C, Inc. in 2026.
Dr. Koichi Moriyama is Chief Security Architect in the CISO Office, Security Innovations Management Department of NTT DOCOMO, INC.
He has served on the W3C, Inc. Board of Directors since its inaugural Board and currently serves as Chair of the Governance Committee while also contributing as a member of the Financial Committee.
His strong leadership has driven various large-scale innovative projects within the NTT Group. Notable examples include the deployment of passkeys based on the W3C WebAuthn standard in collaboration with the FIDO Alliance ecosystem, as well as a company-wide identity modernization initiative that included consolidating hundreds of domain names under "docomo.ne.jp" to strengthen security and privacy. His contributions extend beyond the NTT Group to the global technology industry, academia, and Japanese society, including his role as a trusted advisor to Japanese government initiatives on digital identity.
He has served on the Boards of Directors of both non-profit and for-profit organizations, including the FIDO Alliance, where he has served for more than eight years and continues to serve; the Japan Smartphone Security Association, where he served for two years; and FeliCa Networks, Inc., where he has served for more than five years and continues to serve. His Board experience includes organizations with annual budgets of at least US$5 million and encompasses financial and legal oversight, organizational governance, and risk management.
His unique profile, developed through extensive global communication and collaboration, makes him an exceptional candidate. His experience at Sony, Sony Ericsson, and NTT DOCOMO across multiple countries, together with his work in offices in Belgium, Sweden, the United States, and Japan and his extended stays in the Bay Area, Atlanta, and Brussels, sets him apart.
He received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering and the M.S. degree in computer science from Keio University in 1992 and 1994, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the Graduate School of Information Security, Institute of Information Security, Yokohama, Japan, in 2025. He is currently Professor (Non-tenured) at the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University, and Visiting Professor at the Institute of Information Security.
From the perspectives of governance experience, geographic and stakeholder diversity, global collaboration, and continuity, NTT strongly believes that Dr. Koichi Moriyama will continue to make a significant contribution to the successful and sustainable development of W3C, Inc.
If elected, I will continue to contribute to the long-term success of W3C by supporting stable governance, continuity, and effective collaboration across the community.
The inaugural term was unusual, and the second term was not easy either. The transition required patience and sustained effort from many people across the community, particularly as changes moved quickly and some operations remained unsettled. We managed the transition together, and we continue to work together to enable the creation of Web specifications. However, some challenges remain. My experience during both the inaugural and second terms, including my service as Chair of the Governance Committee, will help me support the new Board in maintaining continuity while enabling W3C to continue evolving successfully.
I have consistently devoted significant time and energy to Board and committee work, particularly during the early stages of the transition and in several critical situations in recent years. I am confident that I can continue contributing with the same level of commitment as I pursue my new career in academia, at Keio University, while continuing my work at NTT DOCOMO, INC.
My years of experience as a member of the Boards of Directors of both non-profit and for-profit organizations, together with my career bridging standards and large-scale deployment, will enable me to continue contributing effectively to the Board. I remain committed to helping W3C evolve as a strong, trusted, and sustainable organization serving the global Web community.
Chris Needham is nominated by TetraLogical Services Ltd.
When TetraLogical nominated Chris in 2024, I noted that Chris is "that rarest of people - someone who is quietly observant, keenly analytical, and always considerate", and two years on the W3C Board together has only strengthened my conviction.
One of Chris's abilities I've most come to appreciate, is his ability to navigate complex and challenging discussions with fairness, diplomacy, and inclusivity. Like many of us, Chris participates at W3C on behalf of a Member organization; and in Chris's case it's the BBC, another mission-led and non-profit organization with a significant investment in the Web. Nevertheless, Chris is always quick to ask how topics discussed by the Board might affect other Members (both large and small), reflecting W3C's principle of "a web for all" through the lens of a community of diverse member organizations.
For these, and many other reasons, I'm delighted to nominate Chris again for the 2026 Consortium Directors election.
This is a critical time for W3C. The Board needs to find our new permanent CEO, there are financial challenges, and with the emergence of generative AI, a technological landscape that has significantly changed in recent years.
We need a Board that works in partnership with the CEO, to continue to develop W3C's strategic direction, a Board that understands that good governance involves oversight of the CEO and the organization's performance, challenging assumptions, in a way that's constructive.
Since being elected to the Board of Directors for the previous term, I have served as the Board's Vice Chair, working closely alongside Léonie as Chair to organise Board activities. As chair of the Audit Committee I have built good working relationships with the audit firms we've contracted, both in the US and in China.
I continue to be a contributor to the technical work of the consortium and an active voice in the Advisory Committee. I chair the Media Working Group and the Media & Entertainment Interest Group, as well as participate in other groups across a range of topics. W3C's technical program is, and should continue to be, driven by our members, and our governance reflective of the needs and interests of our entire membership.
In addition to W3C contributions, my position at the BBC involves advising on emerging technologies and standards, looking at the opportunities and impacts in order to influence the BBC's strategy and policy. This gives me visibility of the wider context that W3C operates in, e.g., with regulators and standards bodies like the IETF and ITU. The BBC is a public service media organization, where impartiality, trust, and a focus on the end user are of primary importance, values which are reflected in my participation at W3C.
The web is vitally important to the BBC's public service mission, and I am pleased to have their support for my candidacy in this election.
Theresa O'Connor is nominated by Apple Inc.
Hi, I'm Tess, and I'm seeking election to W3C's Board of Directors.
One of the most consequential tasks facing the incoming Board is to hire a new CEO, and the stakes are high. In order for W3C to remain the best venue for the creation, maturation, and maintenance of web standards, we need a leader who will prioritize the efficiency and transparency of our processes and operations and the effective provisioning of support and tooling. We need a leader capable of bold decision-making to ensure our sustainability as an organization and in service of our current and future operational and financial needs, someone who can clearly articulate the value of voluntary, consensus-based standards to current and potential future Member organizations. All of this must be done in service of the consistent and timely production of relevant, widely-deployed standards that meet the ever-changing needs of the Web.
The Board Strategy Committee's recent work is promising. Once a permanent CEO is in place, the new Board must partner with them to finalize a strategy, to operationalize it, and to hold management accountable in its efforts to realize it. If elected, I will work diligently with the rest of the Board, W3C management, the other elected bodies, and the AC to ensure W3C's strategy and operations are rooted in our Vision, in the priorities of our global Membership, and in the best interests of the Web.
The Board is majority Member-elected. It can therefore draw on its decades of W3C experience and its deep understanding of our history, culture, and values while conducting its oversight functions. That's a very good thing, but it's also a potential weakness—a Board made up entirely of insiders risks not being able to see the problems it's too close to. This is why the incoming Board must promptly fill the Board-elected seats with independent, outside directors who posses complementary expertise and different perspectives. We should do so to ensure the quality, independence, and transparency of our oversight, to strengthen W3C's relationships with other relevant organizations, and to explore novel fundraising opportunities.
I've participated in technical work at W3C since 2007; my focus has been on foundational web technologies such as HTML and CSS. I've taken on a number of leadership roles over the years—editing specs, chairing groups, and serving on the AB (2025–present) and the TAG (2019–2025). I currently chair the Process and Privacy CGs. Across these years and roles, I've built up a proven track record of helping standards engineers find consensus despite the many obstacles they encounter. I'm eager to apply my decades of experience to the vital work of the Board.
Elsewhere, I'm the President of Ecma International; I chair its General Assembly and sit on its Executive Committee. I also serve as the alternate Steering Group representative for Apple at WHATWG. I will look for opportunities to apply the insights I've gained from being in governance elsewhere to W3C's unique circumstances. Ecma and WHATWG are also stewards of core web technologies; it is essential that we strengthen our relationships with these organizations and the many others we liaise with.
I've been Apple's AC rep for over five years, and in that time I've built our web standards team from the ground up. It's a small, dedicated group of engineers that's heavily involved in work at W3C, WHATWG, Ecma, IETF, and elsewhere. I also manage developer relations for Safari and WebKit. I've a deep understanding of how to run efficient, effective teams, how to productively collaborate with global partners, and how to make high quality, successful standards. For a more complete survey of my work experience, my résumé is on the Web.
For over thirty years W3C has sought to make the Web work for everyone. I encourage the AC to seat a Board from a wide range of identities, lived experiences, abilities, and perspectives—as diverse as the billions who rely on the Web every day.
Thank you for your consideration. Please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions you may have.
Email
ActivityPub: @hober@w3c.social
W3C IRC: hober
W3C Community Slack: @hober
This statement is on the Web.
Florian Rivoal is nominated by SHOGAKUKAN Inc.
The nomination statement is also available in: 中文 (Chinese), 日本語 (Japanese).
The W3C Vision paints W3C as a compelling force for progress towards a web that puts people first. A few years ago, W3C reinvented itself as a standalone legal entity, giving itself greater agency to better realize that vision. Yet, while the values we hold remain strong and relevant, there has been limited progress on how effectively we put them into practice, and the demanding reality of running a standalone organization is catching up to us.
W3C needs focus and discipline to ensure the effectiveness of its core functions, so as to reestablish itself as the attractive venue for developing high-quality interoperable web standards. It needs to reengage its community, enabling a broad cross-section of the membership to feel invested in our collective future and empowered to shape its evolution, and to rebuild the mutual trust and respect necessary for us to collectively tackle the challenges ahead, from operational questions to ecosystem shifts such as the emergence of AI.
That focus and discipline must extend to W3C's governance as well as its operations. As chair of the Finance Committee, I have worked to strengthen W3C's financial oversight. This hasn't been easy, and some issues took far too long to uncover, but the committee persisted in asking questions, investigating discrepancies, and insisting that the Board and membership have a clear and reliable picture of our financial situation. Good governance starts with accurate information and honest answers, and with directors willing to ask hard questions. The Board needs both to support and guide management through difficult challenges, while providing the scrutiny and accountability needed to ensure that problems are confronted rather than deferred.
In finance as in other areas, understanding the reality that W3C faces is only the start. Resolute action is now needed. The strategy recently outlined by the Board provides a high-level roadmap for where we need to go. The challenge now is to turn it into reality, aligning our efforts around shared priorities, making hard choices given our financial constraints, and raising our standards where past success has led us to underestimate what's still needed. That also means being clear about what W3C is: a principled, member-led organization, and one global W3C whose strength comes from bringing together its diverse community rather than allowing the inevitable complexities to fragment us.
I have been part of the W3C community for over 15 years, and have had the opportunity to contribute from many different perspectives: as a technical contributor, an independent consultant working across the Web ecosystem, an Advisory Committee Representative, an Advisory Board member, and now a Director. My work experience, supported by both an engineering background and an MBA, span standards and technology, governance and finance, and different regions and cultures. Born and raised in France, I now live in Japan, and work comfortably in English, French, and Japanese; I have also lived and worked in China and Norway.
I care deeply about W3C and about the role it can play in the future of the Web. I hope the Membership will lend its support to me and to other candidates who share this vision, so that we can help W3C meet this moment and build the stronger organization it needs to be.
I am an independent W3C participant; however my expenses for this role will be covered by Kadokawa, Kodansha, Media Do, Shogakukan, and Shueisha, (5 major actors of the Japanese publishing industry).
Avneesh Singh is nominated by Fondazione LIA.
Fondazione LIA is pleased to nominate Avneesh Singh for the W3C Board of Directors. Over more than a decade of working with Avneesh, I have come to value his ability to bring clarity to complex discussions by identifying the questions that matter most, his collaborative leadership, and his experience leading a global membership nonprofit while continually adapting it to emerging external challenges. I am confident he will make an outstanding contribution to the Board as W3C navigates the challenges of its next chapter.
Strategic Leader Driven by Purpose and Global Impact
I am Chief Operating Officer of the DAISY Consortium, a mission-driven global membership organization with members and partners in more than 100 countries. As part of the executive leadership team, I work closely with the DAISY Board on global strategy, governance, and long-term organizational and financial sustainability.
W3C is entering another important period of transformation, with a new CEO search, a maturing legal entity, growing sustainability challenges, and the need to reinforce W3C's relevance amid profound changes driven by AI, regulation, and global digital growth. My experience on the W3C Advisory Board (AB), executive leadership at DAISY, a decade of work with nonprofit boards, and Harvard executive education on nonprofit board management position me to contribute at the Board level during this next chapter.
As a blind professional, I have experienced firsthand the transformative impact of open standards and accessible technology on people's lives. It continues to shape my commitment to ensuring that the Web remains open, accessible, and beneficial to everyone.
I am based in India, one of the world's largest and fastest-growing digital ecosystems. Much of the future growth of Web users and AI adoption will come from the Global South. Through my work in W3C, Bureau of Indian Standards and DAISY's global initiatives, I have learned that worldwide standards are shaped through worldwide participation. I have consistently worked to address barriers to participation, including accessibility, language, and cultural differences.
Leadership Experience Addressing Current Challenges
W3C has started the process of bringing in the new CEO, and experience has taught me that selecting the right leader is only the beginning. Successful organizations create conditions for new leaders to succeed while preserving trust and institutional knowledge. I participated in the search for DAISY's CEO and have firsthand experience integrating new executive leadership into an established organization. I learned what works and does not work for building trust, ensuring continuity, and helping leadership teams evolve. I have also been involved in succession planning and knowledge transfer for leadership roles.
One of the most valuable leadership experiences came during the challenging COVID-19 period, when DAISY faced significant membership decline and financial uncertainty. Working in close partnership with the Board, we successfully navigated the situation by strengthening member engagement, reinforcing DAISY's relevance, adapting our strategy, and making difficult decisions while preserving our organizational capacity and maintaining a sharp focus on the mission. The experience taught me that strong mutual trust between the Board and executive leadership is indispensable when organizations must navigate periods of significant change.
Contributions to W3C
Thank you for electing me to the AB over the past seven years. I joined at a pivotal moment, as W3C transitioned to an independent legal entity and restructured its governance. Soon after joining, I initiated collaborative work on W3C's organizational strategy to develop purpose, vision, values, principles, and strategic goals. I helped shape the governance structure to make W3C a member-driven organization while ensuring diversity in its governance.
More recently, I was invited to serve on W3C's Impact Framework task force, a cross-organizational group established to understand and strengthen W3C's societal impact. I developed the first structured impact model, building on Vision for W3C and Ethical Web Principles. It provided us with the foundation for further work.
Robust standards depend on strong communities, built through participation and shared purpose. In 2025, I participated in a joint AB and Team effort to improve AC meeting and TPAC formats. I helped reframe the discussion around our approach to member engagement. I encouraged us to focus on how members experience W3C as a community and how we can help AC reps realize they are valued and strengthen their role in shaping W3C's future. This led to increased emphasis on member presentations, networking, and community building.
I remain closely connected to W3C standards development through leading publishing accessibility work, including EPUB Accessibility, and contributing to broader accessibility work.
Looking Ahead: My Priorities as a Board Member
I remain committed to ensuring that W3C develops worldwide standards through worldwide participation and continues to serve as the trusted home for the Web's global community.
Please do not hesitate to contact me.
Venkata Vemuri is nominated by Oracle Corporation.
Venkat brings 20 years of experience building technology in the software industry, through Intertrust, Autodesk, AWS, and Oracle, spanning enterprise software, cloud, AI, data, accessibility, and large-scale Web applications. His W3C engagement through the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has been a revelation and has energized and focused his work where standards meet reality, where they must become products, platforms, and experiences that work for people and organizations at scale. He will bring great energy, a strong industry perspective, and vision to this role. Oracle is proud to support his ongoing work with W3C.
Thank you for considering his nomination.
I am grateful to Oracle for the nomination, and humbled by the opportunity to be considered by the W3C community for the Board of Directors.
For more than three decades, W3C standards have helped shape the Web. Today, as AI and new computing architectures reshape the digital ecosystem, our challenge has expanded: we must strengthen the institution that keeps the Web open, interoperable, accessible, and safe.
Delivering on that Vision requires more than technical excellence. It requires disciplined priorities, transparent governance, financial resilience, broad stakeholder support, and the ability to anticipate change without losing sight of the mission.
I bring over 16 years of experience building and leading technology across enterprise software, cloud, AI, accessibility, and the Web. At Intertrust, Autodesk, Amazon Web Services, and Oracle, I have worked where strategy must translate into outcomes, risks must be surfaced early, priorities compete for resources, and decisions must stand up to real-world scale.
I also bring a global perspective. Born and raised in India, and having lived and worked in the United States for more than 17 years, I have led and worked with teams across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Poland, Estonia, Ireland, Mexico, and India. This experience has given me a practical understanding of how differently access, participation, and opportunity are experienced across regions. A worldwide Web requires an institution capable of recognizing those differences while building durable common ground.
My work with W3C's Accessibility Guidelines Working Group provides another vital lens. I understand the rigor of consensus-based standards development, while much of my career has been spent on the implementation side, turning standards and principles into products and platforms that work at enterprise scale. My book, Principles and Practices of Front-End Engineering, reflects that same focus on translating sound engineering principles into practice.
W3C's 2025-2028 Strategic Objectives set the right direction. The test now is disciplined stewardship: translating those objectives into clear priorities, measurable outcomes, appropriate resources, and accountability.
My experience as a builder and implementer gives me a practical perspective on three priorities for the Board.
1. Broaden Participation, Strengthen Independence
W3C's institutional independence is strengthened by the breadth and commitment of the community that sustains it.
The Board should ensure that W3C has a deliberate stakeholder strategy, with clear priorities and meaningful measures of progress. We should identify the communities W3C needs to engage more deeply, understand what limits participation, and strengthen the value proposition for sustained involvement.
Enterprise developers, cloud and AI builders, startups, public-sector organizations, and industries increasingly dependent on the Web all have a stake in W3C's future.
A broader stakeholder base brings expertise, legitimacy, resources, and resilience.
I will advocate for ensuring that W3C's strategic priorities are reflected in its resource decisions and management goals, with meaningful measures of stakeholder engagement and retention.
2. Measure Impact, Not Activity
W3C has rightly made impact a strategic priority.
The Board should look beyond what W3C produces to understand what changes because of its work: adoption, interoperability, accessibility, implementation, stakeholder reach, and real-world influence.
These are questions of organizational effectiveness, not technical direction. I will advocate for disciplined oversight and meaningful measures that show whether W3C's priorities and resources are advancing its mission.
Good governance distinguishes activity from impact.
My experience on both sides of this equation, contributing to standards and implementing technology at scale, gives me a practical perspective on that distinction.
3. Govern for Long-Term Resilience
Long-term stewardship requires distinguishing temporary technology cycles from structural shifts that could affect W3C's mission, relevance, independence, or sustainability.
AI is one such shift today, but it will not be the last.
My experience across enterprise AI, cloud, and large-scale technology platforms gives me a practical lens for assessing how these shifts could affect W3C's relevance, stakeholder base, and long-term resilience.
The Board should ensure that consequential changes are recognized early, important risks and dependencies are surfaced, and W3C's strategy remains responsive as the external environment and stakeholder expectations change.
The long-term question I would keep before the Board is: What do these shifts mean for W3C's ability to remain independent, relevant, resilient, and influential ten years from now?
Accessibility is one of the clearest tests of that stewardship. Institutional decisions can shape who participates and who benefits. W3C's principle that the Web is for all humanity is therefore more than an aspiration to me. It is a standard against which our decisions should be tested.
Good governance begins with clarity of roles. The Board provides oversight, judgment, direction, and support, while management is responsible for execution.
A strong Board does not need to be operational to be consequential. Its value lies in safeguarding resources, holding the organization accountable, surfacing risks and opportunities early, and exercising judgment about when scrutiny, intervention, or restraint is required.
If elected, my fiduciary responsibility would be to W3C. I would exercise that responsibility with care, loyalty to W3C's interests, and respect for its mission, bylaws, and legal obligations. My decisions would be guided by what best serves W3C's long-term health, not the interests of any single company, technology, geography, or constituency.
The Board already possesses deep institutional and governance expertise. I offer a complementary perspective: an enterprise-scale builder and implementer, a global accessibility advocate, an active W3C contributor, and a technology leader accustomed to translating strategy into measurable outcomes across complex organizations and cultures.
W3C has set an ambitious direction. The responsibility now is to keep that strategy actionable, measure its impact, broaden the community that sustains it, surface risks early, and preserve the institution's strength and independence for the long term.
I would be honored to earn your support.
For more about my background, publications, W3C and technology-community contributions, leadership and governance work, please visit my profile. Selected media coverage of my work across industry, community, and standards is available at Media mentions.
Léonie Watson is nominated by Gain.
I've known Léonie since 2002, when we worked together at Nomensa. It was there that she found her footing in accessibility. In the years since, she's built one of the most credible and technically grounded reputations in the field, but what strikes me most isn't her technical depth - plenty of people at W3C have that. It's her judgement: the ability to make a call when the picture is incomplete, to push back on something without burning the trust needed to work together again the next day, and to know when a decision needs her full attention or when to get out of the way.
W3C is heading into a period that will test its governance as much as its technology. This is where steady, principled governance matters more than any single technical opinion, and it's why I'm nominating Léonie - not just for what she knows, but how she decides.
The nomination statement is also available in: 中文 (Chinese), 日本語 (Japanese), 한국어 (Korean), हिन्दी (Hindi), Français (French), Español (Spanish).
Now, more than ever, I believe that W3C needs a board that is experienced, measured, and capable of governing the Consortium into the future. AI is a major shift that represents both opportunity and risk for W3C, and the CEO transition, declining membership, and our current financial predicament set against a backdrop of turbulent global economics, are all matters affecting the Consortium.
Since being re-elected to the Board in 2024, I've completed the Institute of Directors (IOD) Certificate in Company Direction. The IOD is the only organization in the world that offers director qualifications under Royal Charter and the Certificate is a degree-level qualification covering a director's legal duties and personal liability, what distinguishes an effective board from an ineffective one, how boards should read and query financial information, and how strategies are set and measured at board level.
The IOD Certificate is an independent foundation in international corporate governance, taught by people who have served as Non-Executive Directors of a range of organizations. Completing the Certificate has grounded my own experience (serving on the boards of national and international non-profit organizations over the last 20 years) in globally recognized best practice that is relevant to W3C.
Deep technical and process expertise is well-served at W3C, but a board needs something different. Not less technical understanding necessarily, but a particular discipline of judgement alongside it. An effective board needs people that can make decisions, even when there is uncertainty or a lack of detail; people who can scrutinize and challenge, without compromizing trust; people who know when to step back from the details, and when not to; and people who can weigh and prioritize risks and opportunities across the entire organization and keep its long-term interests at the heart of every decision.
W3C has weathered disruption before, and it did so because its governance remained steady even when the technology, the market, or the organization itself was in flux. This is the kind of governance I want to help W3C continue to build towards, and I'd welcome your support to do it. But whoever you vote for, I encourage you to choose people who have the skills and the ability to work together even when they disagree, because W3C needs the Board's undivided attention if it is to realise the opportunities and mitigate the risks it's presented with.
Thank you.
Greg Whitworth is nominated by Igalia.
Igalia is very pleased to be able to nominate Greg Whitworth for the W3C Board of Directors. I've known Greg for many years through his work at both Microsoft and Salesforce, where he served as AC rep for several years. In that time he has been one of the most consistently engaged members of this community. Those who have long followed the mailing lists or attended member meetings or TPACs will recognize his steady and thoughtful comments and his push for broader coordination across the ecosystem. As one of the main driving forces behind Open UI, he's also shown a real talent for building consensus among competing interests. Building on that experience, he's helped connect standards organizations and Working Groups more efficiently, avoiding pitfalls along the way. This is exactly the kind of practical thinking that I believe W3C needs as it navigates a complex and changing set of variables. Greg brings a depth of standards understanding along with varied product and browser-platform perspectives, and he will help us define a clear sense of what it takes to keep W3C relevant and sustainable. I'm confident he will be a good steward of the organization's mission and an asset to the Board.
I believe that the Web must remain open, interoperable, accessible, secure, privacy-respecting, and globally inclusive; while also modernizing the ways it supports new forms of interaction, developer expectations, and implementation realities. I would like to help W3C navigate that transition with both ambition and discipline. I believe deeply in the W3C's mission to lead the Web to its full potential, and I would bring to the Board a combination of technical standards experience, product leadership, browser-platform perspective, and a practical understanding of how open standards become real capabilities for users, developers, and organizations around the world.
My experience spans seven and half years at Microsoft working across browser platforms and standards, six years at Salesforce connecting platform strategy and standards to the needs of enterprise and consumer customer segments. Across these roles, I have worked with browser vendors on breaking changes, new functionality, participated in accessibility and developer-platform discussions, and contributed to regulatory engagements requiring careful judgment and discretion. These experiences have taught me that successful standards require more than technical correctness: they require sustained participation, clear governance, implementation feedback, and a shared sense of what the ecosystem is trying to achieve. This was done with a keen eye on both monetary spend and responsible use of the team and our customer's valuable time so accountability on outcomes is paramount.
The Web is entering a major transition. AI and its intent-driven experiences are changing how people discover, compose, automate, and act across digital environments. In that transition, W3C's role becomes even more important, but W3C needs to seize it; and in order to do so the organization must be healthy with a strong standing in the industry.
Through the years I have gained experience through learning that major initiatives need horizontal alignment, executive buy-in, and customer support to ensure success. To that end, as a Board member, I would focus on W3C's long-term relevance and viability, standards velocity and the connection between strategic priorities and member value, and its broad public-interest mission.
I would bring a collaborative, pragmatic, and future-oriented perspective to the Board. My goal would be to help W3C remain the place where the Web's most important stakeholders choose to work and working through hard problems together and produce outcomes that are credible, actionable, implementable, and beneficial to the global Web community.
I am honored to be considered for nomination to the W3C Board of Directors and thank you for your consideration.
Hongru (Judy) Zhu is nominated by Alibaba Group.
We are delighted to nominate Ms. Hongru (Judy) Zhu for election to the W3C Board of Directors. Over the past four years on the Board, Judy has brought strategic vision, sound judgment, deep standardization expertise, and a strong sense of responsibility to W3C's governance and strategy.
As the founder of the Standardization Department of Alibaba, Judy leads Alibaba Group's strategies on international regulatory and standards, and its activities in a number of standard organizations home and abroad, such as W3C, ISO, ITU-T, IEEE, IETF and CEN-CENELEC. With 25 years of professional standardization experience, she has served numerous governance and technical leadership positions across international and national standards organizations, including W3C Board of Directors member, W3C Advisory Board member, ISO TC154 Chair, FIDO Board member, member of the GS1 Marketplace Advisory Team, and 3GPP SA3 Vice Chair. She also founded several noted standards bodies, including ICA (IoT Connectivity Alliance), SAEE (Security Alliance of E-Commerce Ecosystem), and IIFAA (International Internet Finance Authentication Alliance).
During her service on the W3C Board of Directors since Oct 2022, Judy has made significant contributions to a range of W3C's strategic discussions, particularly those regarding the transition to W3C legal entity, Bylaws and related policies development, W3C leadership continuity, Partner relationships, and strategic initiatives. Her insights and engagement have been instrumental in shaping W3C's direction during a period of important institutional change. She has consistently championed governance that is both principled and pragmatic, strengthening W3C as the venue where diverse communities in the globe can collaborate to lead the Web to its full potential.
Before serving on the W3C Board of Directors, Judy had served as a member of the W3C Advisory Board from 2015 to 2022, during which she contributed to various work items including Next Big Things, Globalization and Diversity, the Vision and Mission of W3C, while consistently advocating for greater industry participation through the strategic value of Web standards.
Throughout her tenure, Judy has been a dedicated advocate for diversity, inclusion, and industry requirements. Ever since joining the W3C community, she has consistently offered creative thinking and constructive ideas to broaden the global participation, with a particular focus on the underrepresented. She works closely with the Internet communities of Asia, including China, Singapore, Japan, India, and South East Asia, —building channels that amplify their voices within W3C and help ensure that the Web is shaped by diverse perspectives and needs.
W3C now faces a defining moment. It must sharpen its value proposition relative to other venues, complete a leadership transition and support a new CEO, and most importantly, define the role of the Web in the AI era by identifying the standards that carry the greatest strategic value.
Judy is passionate about continuing her service on the W3C Board of Directors, and is fully prepared to carry out the responsibilities of this role with rigor and dedication. If re-elected, Judy will continue to work closely with her Board colleagues, the Members, and the Team to broaden W3C's global and industry engagement, to ensure its technical leadership as the Web meets AI, and advance the organization's commitment to diversity, inclusion, and globalization. Her guiding vision remains unchanged: a Web that is open, accessible, and interoperable for all, and a W3C that thrives in the chapters ahead.
If you have any questions, please contact Judy via email.
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