Dear all, following Yrjo’s kind nomination, please let me take this opportunity to present my statement of interest in running for the EURALO ALAC seat in the coming term, for your kind consideration in the coming elections. For those of you whom I have not yet had the chance to meet in person, please allow me for a brief introduction. In my day job I teach and research international law and internet governance at the University of Lodz in Poland (https://www.wpia.uni.lodz.pl/en). I am also a Scientific Committee member of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (https://fra.europa.eu/en/about-fra). Most recently I have been elected to chair (together with Folake Olagunju) the Advisory Board of the Global Forum for Cyber Expertise (https://thegfce.org/about-the-gfce/). Within ICANN I have had the opportunity to serve on the ALAC as appointed by the NomCom to represent European end users since 2018. I currently serve as ALAC Vice Chair for Outreach and Engagement and co-chair (together with Alfredo Calderon) the Capacity Building Working Group within AtLarge. Since my appointment I have been extensively supporting the AtLarge leadership in advancing the community and implementing key takeaways from the AtLarge review, including during the recent ATLAS III Summit. Before joining the ALAC, I was twice an ICANN fellow (ICANN58 and ICANN60 where I also served as a Fellowship Coach) and a member of the NCUC. Working with ICANN's GSE team I have supported various events in Poland and beyond, just to mention the launch of Internet Academy Poland as well as a series of panels during the annual Computers and Data Privacy Conference in Brussels (CPDP). If elected, I would like to keep working on building capacity within the AtLarge community with particular focus on promoting and advancing the leading role EURALO has been playing in its CB work. The current capacity building work within EURALO has allowed the AtLarge community to better understand end user interests and duly represent them. Among these numerous initiatives let me just note the rich array of IG Summer Schools we are hosting in the region, the successful EURODig and corresponding local events, spanning across the continent and, last but certainly not least, the varied and well informed group of European individual users that facilitates them. Through all of these and beyond EURALO has supported the ICANN community with well experienced and informed members as well as versatile policy perspectives. I want to keep working on advancing these efforts, with particular focus on my home region of Central and Eastern Europe. I appreciated the most recent opportunity to work together with eager, young EURALO members in Hungary organizing the first Hungarian IGF last year (https://igfhungary.hu/), I enjoyed working with GSE staff on showcasing ICANN’s work to my students (https://mlodziwlodzi.pl/wirtualny-miesiac-z-icann-na-wpia-ul/), while I highly appreciate the advice and skills shared by our experienced members, who have worked on similar events before (just to mention the long running series of highly successful IRIS conferenceshttps://www.univie.ac.at/RI/IRIS2020/ or our members involvement within Giganethttps://www.giga-net.org/ ). I have utterly enjoyed working in this quickly advancing community and, if given the opportunity, I would be eager to support EURALO’s position in the global AtLarge and ICANN community. I am particularly looking forward to welcoming those coming to Katowice this fall for the IGF 2020. I view capacity building as the initial and necessary step toward efficient and well informed policy development. Steps already taken to achieve this aim are: the ongoing series of webinars, upcoming ICANN Learn courses and a repository of CB resources. For a detailed description of current and upcoming capacity building resources please kindly see here:https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Capacity+Building+and+R... and here:https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Capacity+Building+Worki... for the overall description of the work of the CBWG. As a side note: CBWG is always open to new volunteers! Feel free to reach out if you made it this far in reading my message and (still) want to join. Further developing the tools referenced above will hopefully allow to do both: better understand and represent end user interests and initiate discussions on how to improve existing processes. I am convinced AtLarge is in the best position to serve as a capacity building and, effectively, informed policy development resource as it spans across the entire ICANN community, welcoming views from across regions and cultures. I view the AtLarge as a consensus building platform and a test bed for well informed, pragmatic policies for the entire ICANN community. EURALO has a unique experience to offer in this respect, as we come from a very limited geographical space that has managed to find feasible, consensus based solutions for peaceful and efficient coexistence. This is an example to be shred and duplicated globally and I would be honoured to be able to try and meet this aim. For my official SOI please kindly see here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1otj9Hr24ghtDJEkzOOwQayomq5_SR01Q/view and here https://icann.zoom.us/rec/play/tMUvIuihrDs3HtadsASDV6ArW465Jvis23Ma8_YIyxu2V... for the recording from the last EURALO call where I was granted the opportunity to present it. Thank you for your consideration. Kind regards, Joanna Kulesza ------------------- Joanna Kulesza, PhD University of Lodz, Poland ICANN ALAC Vice Chair SOI: https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/Joanna+Kulesza+SOI TT: @KuleszaJ