Hello everyone
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After five and a half years leading the organization, and I begin to write my final Director's Corner as Kantara's Executive Director, I am certainly doing it with mixed emotions. There's sadness because of the all the highs that I'll miss - exhilarating when the organization reaches a milestone, or its members achieve a breakthrough, or the highly thought-provoking conversations with community friends and industry counterparts. It's has been such a blast! But with the highs come the lows too - the organization encounters a setback or a member incurs the loss of a loved one or my regrets on leaving some projects unfinished as the clock ticks down. Highs or lows regardless, I'll miss them all because Kantara has been my life (and my wife's life as she has had to put up with a lot from Kantara and me!) for a chunk of years now. Don't kid yourself. Running a global non-profit - particularly with the ethics of equality and transparency ethics , transparency and low/no barriers to participation that Kantara embraces in its mantra - is not easy street. It's competitive, political, demanding on one's time - sometimes exceptionally so - and on occasion can take you outside your comfort zone. So there's something kind of attractive in winding down to a more balanced life that most folks think typifies New Zealand - more relaxed, less deadline-driven and closer to nature. I'll still be lurking! So don't count me out too soon while I continue some activities in Kantara and for its members and the wider global digital identity community for some years yet. I want to start this month's Director's Corner with a brief update on the status of the ED search. Following the reach-out to Members, and then advertising the role on LinkedIn in late March, the Board received over 40 applications. In the past couple of weeks this total pool was reduced to a shortlist of five that the Board is currently interviewing. I am pleased to say that all of these candidates are more than capable of doing the job and that the process has brought about some interesting structural alternatives for the Board's consideration. The Board's job will be anything but easy when it makes its final selection during May. An announcement will be made as soon as it can be. The details of the handover from me will be announced in the months that follow. I'll be writing to members to say my 'see you around' later this month, and to update them on the handover to my successor.
My role is not the only part of the organization seeing change. There are changes afoot in the Assurance Trust Framework operations program too, a part of the organization that is gets global attention these days and attracts increasing numbers of services seeking conformity assessment and approval against Kantara's NIST SP 800-63-3 and other classes of approval under its Identity Assurance Framework scheme. If you would like to be involved in Kantara's scheme operations, please let me know.
We were thrilled to welcome LexisNexis to our membership ranks in April. They join Experian and Neustar as members from that sector of the ecosystem. Thank you! Many of you will have seen the tweet, and LinkedIn post, regarding the following members renewing in April: 2Keys, Experian, Internet2, Verizon and individual contributor Mark King. Thank you one and all for demonstrating your support of Kantara's ethics and ethos and the activities that underpin our mission to grow and fulfil the market for the trustworthy use of identity and personal data in pursuit of our vision to see the equitable and transparent exchange of identity and personal data for mutual value.
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