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Officers

Officer Biographies

Ram Mohan - Vice President, ISOC Philadelphia
rmohan@isoc-phila.org

Ram Mohan is the Executive Vice President & Chief Technical Officer of Afilias. At Afilias, Ram is charged with managing all of Afilias' technical operations which support the generic top-level domains (gTLDs) .INFO and .ORG, in addition to a number of sponsored and country code domains. With Ram's guidance, Afilias was the first to implement an XML-based "thick" registry running on the new Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP), and was the first to complete the largest transition of a domain registry when it successfully transitioned .ORG from VeriSign Global Registry Services on behalf of the .ORG registry operator, the Public Interest Registry. Before joining Afilias in September 2001, Ram was at Infonautics Corp., a pioneering online database and content distribution company. He has held various leadership positions at Infonautics, including Interim COO, CTO and VP, Product Marketing. Ram is the founder of the award-winning CompanySleuth product, and created the Sleuth line of business at Infonautics. He helped architect Electric Library, the United States' most used online reference database in schools and libraries, and Encyclopedia.com, the first free encyclopedia on the Internet. Prior to joining Infonautics, Ram worked with First Data Corporation, Unisys Corporation and KPMG Peat Marwick in a variety of leadership, engineering and technology positions. Ram's educational background reflects his belief that technology is best used for business advantage and market leadership. He has a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Mangalore, an MBA in Entrepreneurial Management from Bharathidasan University, and is completing a second Master's in Computer Science at Philadelphia's Drexel University. Ram has been active in the ICANN community, serving on the Redemption Grace Period (RGP) implementation task force, the GNSO Whois task force, as well as the Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) registry implementation committee. Ram is also a member of the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SECSAC), which is an ICANN Board advisory committee comprised of Internet pioneers and technical experts including operators of Internet root servers, registrars, and TLD registries. Ram was previously named one of the Philadelphia Business Journal's 40 under 40 for 2003, serves on the Board of the Philadelphia-based Metropolitan Career Center, serves on the advisory boards of several Philadelphia-area startup companies, and is actively involved in cancer-related nonprofits. In 2010, Ram was named to InfoWorld Magazine’s CTO 25 Awards for leadership in deploying DNSSEC.

Roland LaPlante - Treasurer, ISOC Philadelphia
rlaplante@isoc-phila.org

Roland LaPlante is the Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Afilias. Mr. LaPlante oversaw the marketing and launch planning for .INFO in 2001, and the transition and launch of every TLD supported by Afilias since (14 domains and over 12 milllion registrations). Roland's 30-year career in marketing began at Procter and Gamble. He has held senior marketing positions at McGraw Hill, Providian Corporation, Citibank and Heublein, Inc. and was most recently Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Xlibris, an Internet publishing company based in Philadelphia. Roland graduated with a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A from Amos Tuck. In June 2001,he accepted the position of CMO of Afilias.

Tom Durham - Secretary, ISOC Philadelphia
tdurham@isoc-phila.org

Tom Durham is Senior Writer at Afilias who joined the company in 2003. In his position he is responsible for RFP review and proposal preparation, and creation and maintenance of technical documentation of all types, such as user manuals, procedures, and job aids. Tom has an extensive career in technical writing, online help development, and training design and delivery. He was a manager in the telecom industry for nearly twenty years, working for industry giants Mountain Bell (now Qwest) and AT&T in their Corporate Headquarters in New Jersey. Prior to the telcom industry divesture, Tom and forty other training experts from around the country were selected to be part of a training task force at AT&T Business Services Corporate Headquarters in Parsippany, New Jersey. This elite team developed all of the new training used by the eighty Business Services Centers throughout the U.S. at divestiture. Tom lead the sales training development team and for his efforts received the prestigious "Eagle Award" for excellence from the president of the Business Services group. Tom concluded his corporate career with a four-year stint at Telcordia Technologies in Pistcataway, New Jersey, where he was first a proposal development manager then a training development project manager. In 1989, Tom and his wife Tina started a training consulting firm, The Writers Group. For the past eighteen years, the company has provided performance improvement solutions to clients such as AT&T, Sprint, Merck, and Telcordia Technologies. Tom graduated with a BA from the University of Texas at El Paso. He has taught the Instructional Design and Methodology course for the American Management Association (AMA), and Sales Training for AT&T Account Executives as a consultant.

Steven Pack - Treasurer, ISOC Philadelphia
spack@isoc-phila.org

Steven Pack joined Afilias October of 2001 as the registry’s Compliance Officer specializing in managing organizational compliance regarding policies and procedures affecting conflicts of interest and equal access for partners and organizational members engaged within the various channel segments of the domain name market.

Steve has over twenty years of management experience holding positions at numerous industry leaders such as Avis, American Forest Products/Louisiana Pacific, Mack Trucks, J.K. Lasser/Deloitte & Touche, as well as some mid-sized firms and start-ups.

Prior to joining Afilias, Steve was a consultant at CFO Synergy, LLC serving as Chief Financial Officer for many small to mid-sized companies. Steve has also held myriad financial-related positions for companies such as RHI Management Resources, Diesel Performance, Inc., Stockton Kenworth, Inc., among others, and was the managing partner of SPB, a consulting firm in northern California, providing support as Chief Financial Officer for small and medium-size organizations.

Steve graduated with a B.S. in Business and Accounting from Towson State College. Steve is currently a member of the AICPA and the Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants.