Sophia Bekele

Early life and family

Bekele was born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the third of six children. She is the daughter of Ato Bekele Eshete Wolde Michael, a prominententrepreneur engaged in various business sectors in the country, and a founder and Board Director of United Bank, S.C and United Insurance, S.C, one of the first and largest private banks and insurance companies in Ethiopia. Her mother is Sister Mulualem Beyene Engida, a medical nurse. Bekele attended a private Catholic high school, and traveled to the United States to acquire her higher education.

Higher education

Bekele earned her bachelor's degree in Business Analysis and Information Systems from San Francisco State University and an MBA in the Management of Information Systems MIS from Golden Gate University. She is also a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified Control Specialist (CCS), and certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT), certifications issued to professionals who demonstrate competent knowledge and proficiency in the field of IS Audit, Security & Enterprise IT governance principles and practices.

Honorary mentions

In recognizing Sophia Bekele’s major contributions to her field, CIO East Africa in 2017 named her an "Industry Trailblazer" and "Internet Governance Pioneer". In 2014, Sophia Bekele was enumerated among the "Top 20 Inspirational African Diaspora Professional Women in Europe" by ADIPWE List 2014. Released on 28 March 2014 for the International Women's Day, the honorary mention lists Bekele under "TechEntrepreneur in technology Transfer; "a list of African Women who have achieved phenomenal success, and inspire a new generation of African Women to share ideas to fulfill their potential to contribute to the rebranding of Africa and the development of the continent, by identifying opportunities to transfer the vast amount of knowledge gained in Europe and the rest of the Diaspora". Also in 2014, Bekele was nominated for Forbes Africa “Most Inspirational Young African Leader”

In 2013, Bekele was acclaimed as one of the "two leading ladies in Africa’s ICT sector" by Bloomberg TV and was named on African Women to Watch, a prime TV program, which "celebrates the most fearless, competitive and visionary African women of our time", and explores "the women working hard to close the gender gap and shaping the continent's social, political and economic landscape."

Also in 2013, Bekele was named among the "50 Trailblazers – A future made in Africa", by the UK’s NewAfrican Magazine, an IC Publications group, "Collector’s Edition" which coincided with the continent’s 50th anniversary celebrations of the African Union, as those "who are realizing significant achievements in their specific field of endeavor" and features individuals who are "breaking ground, making Africa proud and propelling it into a future of great hope." Bekele was also in the same year of 2013, nominated for the TransformAfrica 2013 Continental Excellence Awards in ICT which was hosted by H.E Paul KAGAME, President of the Republic of Rwanda in Kigali and Dr. Hamadoun Toure, the Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

In 2006, Bekele's work in Africa, noted as a representative entrepreneur, was profiled in the book "Africa: Continent of Economic Opportunity by David Fick.

In 2005, Bekele was presented with a Paul Harris Fellow award for her contributions in the various works of International Rotary Clubs. Also In 2005, Bekele was recognized, along side women in the Ethiopian Federal Parliament, government women ministers and women investors and company executives, in recognition of her entrepreneurship and corporate leadership. - Ethiopian Herald

Career

Bekele started out as a young MBA, and is now an international entrepreneur who has built a successful career track record in fields that are traditionally male-dominated. Bekele was recruited out of college by Bank of America and started her career in IT auditing and information security, a highly specialized field and highly male dominated at the time. She then moved on advancing her career in corporate governance and risk management to hold managerial positions with UnionBanCal Corporation and PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Currently Bekele travels with her work globally, while coordinating the work of her different offices in Nairobi and Mauritius in Africa, as well as Walnut Creek, California, US, where she has been a resident for nearly two decades, first while pursuing her undergraduate and graduate studies, and a business career in information technology, especially in the areas of corporate governance, Internet security and policy development. At the same time, she has run her entrepreneurship work in Addis Ababa, where she has a firm business base and family.

CBS International

In early 2000, Bekele broke off from her corporate career to focus on international technology issues and third-world technological development using Africa as a base model. Most of Bekele's work in these years has been associated with CBS International, a company she founded and served as President and Chief Executive Officer. CBS International is a California-based consulting company with focus on technology transfer to emerging markets. Primarily, the company provided international technology procurement, project-based capacity building, technological project management, internet/intranet systems integration and Internet related solutions. As an affiliate, Bekele set up SbCommunications Network, plc, (SbCnet), based in Addis Ababa, specializing in technology integration and support services. Bekele was interested to do nation building projects that have high impact and yield to benefit society. Through her companies, she expressed interest and participated and won international contracts for large scale projects such as the information technology infrastructure for the Organization of African Unity (AU) General Secretariat and an integrated data networking infrastructure for the Ethiopian parliament, House of Peoples’ Representatives and House of Federation. The AU project was an e-government Internet-working project initiative, sponsored by UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) involving the implementation of a complex fiber-optic-based information technology campus wide area network infrastructure and considered one of the largest IT projects in the Country at the time. CBS International handled technological inputs and services procurement while SbCnet provided strategic technology integration services and field management and successfully commissioned the project

The Parliament project was also an e-government internet initiative funded by a consortium of donor agencies. This project received significant local media coverage because of Bekele’s public challenge to what she considered an unfair procurement process, a challenge which she fought single-handedly and ultimately won, making it a precedent setting bid reversal case on a major government contract. She appealed through the General Auditor's office of the country over a nine-month period, and the investigations declared the project award improper Bekele believes her stand helped promote transparency and accountability in the government contracting process at the time, also vindicating her and her company. In this project, her company SbCnet was the Prime Contractor and handled all front-line liaison and project services delivery to the Parliament and worked closely with its foreign partners CBS International, USA, and a South African company Dimension Data Holdings.

Bekele later on also challenged the private sector over her views of what turned out to be the illegitimate formation of a Stock Exchange in Addis Ababa. She wrote an editorial claiming that this entity was planned without the proper rules, regulations, infrastructure and controls. To her vindication, the government eventually rejected the proposal for the share dealing group in November 2002. As a follow-up, though there was no direct link with Bekele, in April 2008 the Ethiopian government launched a commodities exchange market, aimed at boosting fair trade and stabilizing its food market.

In 2004, Bekele shifted her focus back to the US to meet the challenges arising from the major corporate governance scandals in the US, such as Enron and WorldCom, therefore, repositioning herself and her California Company to advise US based Clients in public/private markets, primarily in Corporate Governance and Risk Management areas, including Sarbanes-Oxley ACT, and corporate relations/communications programs. She built clients such as Intel Corp. (Nasdaq), Genetech, BDO Sieldman LLP, Federal Reserve Bank, OnScreen Technologies, (OTC), and the like.

International Domain Names (IDNs)

During her tenure at ICANN from 2005-2007, and her service to the Council of the GNSO (Generic Names Supporting Organization), Bekele was instrumental in initiating policy dialogue over IDNs as well as developing the framework for leading a language group. Bekele led an active campaign to introduce IDNs under which new Internet Domain names in Arabic, Cyrillic, Russian, Chinese and non-Latin alphabets will become available, thereby providing non-English/non-Latin language native speakers an opportunity to access and communicate on the Internet in their native languages. She forged to form an IDN working group within ICANN to bring the global voices of the IDN stakeholders to ICANN. Bekele was then nominated to chair ICANN’s IDN Working Group at gNSO and was highly influential in drafting the IDN policy guidelines. As a result, Bekele was credited for successfully championing the inclusion of the global IDN community within this policy dialogue and championing the work of IDNs at ICANN. This global IDN group, which later on organized itself as the International Domain Resolution Union (IDRU) gave a testimonial to Bekele's work over IDNs. The IDNs are now introduced by ICANN under the auspices of the current new GTLD program.

.africa

In 2006 Bekele turned her focus to .africa – a new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) for the Africa geographic name that she also championed during her appointment at ICANN. The project has been introduced and will be delegated for operation under ICANN’s new gTLD program. ICANN is a U.S.-based non-profit organization that is overseeing the global Internet expansion project to introduce new generic Top-Level Domain Names (gTLDs) under the new gTLD Program.

Bekele started the DotAfrica initiative following the important experiences gained from her ICT Service delivery in Africa and the work as gNSO advisor to ICANN. The gNSO is a policy advisory body which advises the ICANN Board on global public policies that guide the development of the Internet, including the gTLD policy and processes affecting such TLDs as .asia, .com, .net, .org and the policy development work on new gTLD (generic Top Level Domain names). Bekele made a clear case for a DotAfrica (.africa) gTLD for Africa within ICANN and also the global Internet Community on behalf of the global African and Pan-African constituency. Her personal dream for the DotAfrica initiative that she is leading is, to deploy the new domain name as a positive branding opportunity for Africa, that will benefit all Africans and in the use of technology to power their businesses, and to also realize certain charitable projects aimed at giving back to the community such as the miss .africa and the generation .africa program that her organization has already initiated to empower girls and young people in Africa in the field of technology. She soon led the .africa initiative under a new start-up DotConnectAfrica (DCA) introducing it to the Pan-African inter-governmental organizations – the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa UNECA and the African Union Commission (AUC) and received endorsement for DCA respectively. Other entities that also gave endorsement for DCA include the IDRU group and the Corporate Council for Africa (CCA) and various African Governments.

Bekele then launched a global promotional campaign establishing DCA as lead and spearheading the .africa project under a Yes2dotAfrica Campaign. The campaigns involved the first ever global multilingual (English, French, Arabic) social media infrastructure to promote .africa, .afrique and .afriqia. Bekele received ample media coverage for her work on .africa including honorary mention by The New African Magazine as one of Top 50 African Trailblazers for a successful Six Year "yes2dotaAfrica global Campaign Bloomberg TV covering her .africa work, Enterprise Technology Magazine named her "Sophia Bekele: Champion of .africa initiative" Diplomat East Africa inscribed her "Brains behind .africa." CIO East Africa calling her views "controversial" on who should run gTLDs', said "Sophia Bekele has been in the news if not for promoting DotConnectAfrica’s bid for the DotAfrica geographical gTLD for the past three years, then in a controversial statement about the same":

DotConnectAfrica Trust - Bekele currently oversees the .africa new gTLD initiative under the DotConnectAfrica Trust, a non-profit, non partisan organization. As Executive Director of DCA Trust & CEO of DotConnectAfrica Registry Services Limited (Kenya), she has led a multi-national team of experts to prepare and submit an application for the DotAfrica (.AFRICA) generic Top-Level Domain in May 2012 to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). She is also overseeing the women and youth initiatives she has launched under the same platform.

Bekele has been very active in the Internet Domain Name Service (DNS) industry since 2005, when she was initially elected as the first African to serve on the gNSO of ICANN. She has been on various forums discussing and presenting the DNS Industry and its benefits to Africa under the Multi-Stakeholder Internet Governance (MIG) Framework. It was this experience that made her become fully enmeshed in the work of Global Internet Governance and multi-stakeholder advocacy that led her to where she is now: leading a new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) initiative as one of the applicants contending for the .africa generic Top-Level Domain

Overcoming challenges

Bekele's eight year .africa journey was not without a trial. She has fought many challenges by her opponents over the issues of accountability and transparency on the bid for .africa, including the African Union Commission(AUC). For instance, in April 24, 2014, during the International ICT Girls day, the AUC blocked Bekele from speaking at an ITU event that was held on the AUC premises in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, due to a dispute over the .africa. Bekele has been challenging the AUC, who allegedly disavowed the first endorsement they gave her organization DotConnectAfrica in 2009 to apply at ICANN for the .africa gTLD, to subsequently request for the same directly from ICANN, at the ICANN 42 International meeting held in Dakar Senegal from 23–28 October 2011. AUC requested from ICANN to include all similar name strings ".africa", ".afrique" and ".afriqia", in the list of "reserved names", to afford special legislative protection to the AUC to own these strings so as to make it unavailable to anyone, through a method of bypassing the formal application process of the ICANN's new generic top level domains (gTLDs). Bekele strongly opposed to the AUC's request to reserve the names saying the request was against the ICANN gTLD rule book, thus reserving the name will disqualify all competition to enable the AUC to separately negotiate the delegation of these name strings under a separate process outside the aegis of the official ICANN new gTLD programme. Bekele came victorious on this battle at ICANN Dakar, as it became known later that ICANN could not reserve the names for the AU, however ICANN did recommend to the AUC to use Government Advisory Committee to raise concerns that an applicant is seen as potentially sensitive or problematic, or to provide direct advice to the Board, so as to change the outcome of the gTLD. which AUC implemented the advice during the GAC objection period, to the detriment of DCA's application.

In addition, failing to secure the reserve names, the AUC then directly endorsed another firm from SouthAfrica to apply to ICANN, who was also supported by its own AU Dotafrica Task Force. According to the public part of their application, the South African company submitted a "non-community" application to ICANN naming AUC as a “co-applicant” and giving the .africa registry and intellectual property rights to the AUC in a separate contract Bekele's organization then challenged the ICANN application process for the competition, through the official channels of ICANN, as well as challenged the AUC's RFP process that gave a direct endorsement for the SouthAfrican company by requesting full disclosure of the process with the AU leadership and ICANN Governmental Committee, in the interest of accountability and transparency to the global public at large

Looking for Outside support and Appeal to US Congress: Having no affirmative response either from ICANN nor the AUC, in October 2013, Bekele's company DotConnectAfrica Trust filed for an independent review panel process ('DCA Trust vs. ICANN') at the International Dispute Resolution Procedures (ICDR) in New York, to investigate these issues over matters of .africa, as ICANN did not allow further processing of DCA's application due to Governmental objections, despite DCA's passing on all financial, technical and operational evaluated criteria. In February 2013, Bekele had written an open letter to the United States Congress who gave final approval for the new gTLD program to ICANN, to escalate DotConnectAfrica’s complaints and grievances and appealed for a congressional Ombudsman that would look into any irregularities and any allegations of illegality regarding the implementation of the new gTLD program.

In June 2014, at the ICANN International Meeting in London, while the independent review process of the .africa gTLD was proceeding, and in response to the announcement of ICANN NTIA transition, however a separate process, ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organization (gNSO) made an unprecedented move to unanimously endorse a joint statement in support of the creation of an independent accountability mechanism, which vindicated Bekele's efforts. She responded in an open commentary thanking the gNSO group for their work and urged them to continue to be vigilant, and leave no stones unturned to make sure that ICANN decision makers are held accountable in their decision makings.

Bekele was also vocal on the debate about the March 2014 National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announcement of intent to transition key Internet Domain Name function oversight from US to a non-governmental body and wrote a public commentary vindicating her engagement with US Congress, and further advising "Therefore, I wish to call for the establishment of such a new body that will work in cooperation with the NTIA to exercise supervisory responsibilities over ICANN". Her comments relate to the issues that surround ICANN’s accountability and transparency that have been lacking in its own processes. She notes that the US Exceptionalism should be reconsidered in this regard to protect foreign governments from interfering, and if ICANN is defending its transition based on this principle, thus arguing in another public commentary in that there is "No legal basis for IANA transition" in the post-mortem analysis of the Senate Committee hearing that took place on Feb 25 2015

ln the interim, The DCA Vs ICANN IRP case overseen by the constituted .africa International Tribunal issued various key procedural rulings which has been a victory for DCA including a temporary injunction award to DCA against ICANN, which ruled "ICANN must immediately refrain from any further processing of any application for .africa until this Panel has heard the merits of DCA’s Trust Notice of Independent Review Process and issued its final decision regarding the same"

The IRP Tribunal also accepted DotConnectAfrica’s position on the procedural framework of the IRP proceedings thereby adopting it as a way in which the IRP would be. Several other key requests by ICANN to role back original declarations of Tribunal under the newly constituted panel was overturned by the Tribunal including no revisiting of its August 2014 declaration in particular, to the case of hearing witnesses therefore, the tribunal requiring all the witnesses to testify in final hearing

Win over DCA Trust vs. ICANN IRP: On 9 July 2015, the .Africa IRP International Tribunal in its final declaration ruled that DCA Trust, the organization founded by Bekele was the prevailing party, which vindicated her efforts and her company. The Tribunal also recommended that ICANN continue to refrain from delegating the .AFRICA gTLD and permit DCA Trust’s application to proceed through the remainder of the new gTLD application process. The Tribunal further declared that ICANN is to bear, pursuant to Article IV, Section 3, paragraph 18 of the Bylaws, Article 11 of Supplementary Procedures and Article 31 of the ICDR Rules, the totality of the costs of this IRP and the totality of the costs of the IRP Provider.

The ruling of the .Africa IRP Tribunal which DCA Trust prevailed against ICANN has also received lot of media coverage given its precedential value.

Win over the preliminary injunction of the DCA Trust vs. ICANN Court Case: Following July 2015 IRP ruling, Sophia Bekele's organization DCA Trust took ICANN to court over the way it handled the IRP declaration, on April 12, 2016. Following this, a United States District Court, Central District Of California - Western Division has granted a Preliminary Injunction for DotConnectAfrica, the decision for case no. 16-CV-00862 RGK (JCx) [PDF] The ruling detailed among other things that The balance of equities tips in favor of granting the preliminary injunction. This also follows a March 4, 2016 ruling which her organization was granted as an Ex Parte Application for Temporary Restraining Order (TRO), Interim Relief [PDF Case No: CV 16-00862 RGK (JCx)] that ICANN should hold off from delegating the .AFRICA top-level domain (TLD) to the competing application sponsored by the AUC - ZA Central Registry (ZACR).

The ruling specifically noted: The AUC's relationship with ZACR, and its interest in preventing the delay of issuing rights to .Africa creates a conflict of interest. The court also said the public interest is best served by a “fair and transparent application process” for domains. ICANN argued delay is harming Africa’s ability to participate in the Internet economy. But the court said it gave little weight to an African Union official’s declaration because of the Union’s relationship with ZACR. On balance, the Court finds it more prejudicial to the African community, and the international community in general, if the delegation of .Africa is made prior to a determination on the fairness of the process by which it was delegated.

Bekele then was quoted by The Register that the injunction is a "vindication" of its long-held complaints against ICANN (it started back in 2013).

Board and public service

With the registered successes in ICT project delivery in Africa, Bekele was invited to serve as an adviser on various UN led initiative advisory boards and committees. In 2002, she was appointed by H.E. K.Y. Amoako, then Executive Secretary and UN under Secretary General of United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), as an expert advisor to serve on the Advisory Technical Committee (ATAC) of UNICT Task-force, sponsored by UNECA. The ATAC formulated policy and recommendation and provided technical guidance and direction on the implementation especially on how to bridge the digital divide between the developed countries and Africa. In her tenure at ATAC, Bekele co-authored the ‘Common Position for Africa’s Digital Inclusion’ which was developed in response to the UNECA Conference of Minister’s Resolution 812 (XXXI). The ‘Common Position’ was a blueprint that reflected Africa’s ICT position which was communicated to various global forums such as the G8 DOT Force, ECOSOC, the UN Task Force, World Economic Forum, NEPAD initiatives, etc. In 2003, Bekele was elected to serve as the East African Representative to the African Regional Network (ARN), a UN led initiative. Following such, in 2009, she has also served on the Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies and Development (UNGAID), an initiative started by the former United Nations Secretary-General, and the Chairmanship of Intel’s CEO Craig Barret. Also in 2009, she served as an expert adviser to the joint initiative of United Nations Public Administration Network and International Telecommunications Union (UNPAN/ITU) where she was representing the private sector in discussions about Public Private Partnerships (PPP), e-government and MDG implementation. She has since used these identifying frameworks for other ICT projects and Internet-Centered activities that are geared towards building a 21st-century e-enabled information and knowledge driven society in Africa.

In 2005, Bekele was elected member of the ICANN's Council of the GNSO (Generic Names Supporting Organization), by the NomCom, under the then Chairmanship of Dr. Vinton Cerf. The gNSO is a policy advisory body which advises the ICANN Board on global internet policy and the policy development work on new gTLDs. During her term at ICANN, she championed the IDN Policy Dialog for the international community. Concurrently, Bekele initiated the first African-run Registry for a .africa TLD, and run a successful 6-year “Yes2dotAfrica” global awareness campaign.

In 2007 Bekele was elected and served for two tenures as Alumni Board member of Golden Gate University. In 2008, Bekele co-founded the Internet Society Chapter (ISOC) San Francisco Bay, and was elected to serve as its Executive Board Member Bekele was a former Board Member of ISACA (Information Systems and Control Association), and a current steering committee member of the World Affairs Council, Contra Costa, California. Over the years, Bekele has also served as International Ambassador to various Rotary Clubs where she has earned recognition of a Paul Harris Fellow for her contributions.

Other work and ventures

Bekele is involved in public affairs commentary and continues to write articles on various subjects that is of current events that have been published in different newspapers, journals and Internet web sites. The media has also frequently sought her views in her area of expertise.

Bekele has spoken in many international conferences, lectures and forums throughout her career on a range of subjects including, Corporate Governance, Internet policy, technology for Development, the global economy, African Affairs, Entrepreneurship and Start-ups, IT Audit and online security, as well as women and youth.

To mention but few, Bekele has delivered a keynote address "Standing on the Shoulder of Giants" at the New York 2014 CUNY Young African Leadership Symposium YALS; "Digital Innovation in Africa" and a high level panel on “US-Africa Relations" at the New York Africa Summit in Gabon; "Bridging the Gender GAP" for ITUs International Girls day event in Addis Ababa; "Africa:Economic Development Through Technology" at Yale University, USA; "How to build a Top Level Domain Community" in Munich, Germany; keynote at the "Launch of the DotAfrica East African campaign"- AITEC East Africa Summit" "Public Private Partnership" sponsored by UNDESA and ITU World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) forum in Geneva; "Internet Governance-The Policy Divide" at Golden Gate University in San Francisco; "Role of the United Nations in supporting efforts to promote digital opportunity, in particular in Africa and the least developed countries" United Nations General Assembly high-level meeting on ICT in New York on ICT; "Connecting Africa through Information Networks" International Telecommunication Union (ITU's) “ConnectAfrica” Heads of State submit in Kigali Rwanda; Panel discussion on "How to build successful start-ups- Featuring people that have made great impact" Stanford Women in Business in California, alongside founders and executives of Pandora, YouTube, Gmail and Yahoo where the work of her company, CBS International was credited for "bringing powerful advanced information technology to the developing world with long-standing initiatives to bring the internet to Africa. and Rebranding Africa with African Leadership Retreat in South Africa

Bekele's international work has appeared on various leading TV and radio programs in Africa, the US and internationally, including a Bloomberg TV Africa program on "African Women to Watch", CNN discussing her "Yes2dotAfrica" campaign in Dakar Senegal, Africa 7 TV Channel program on "Women in Charge" in Senegal,a Nation Television (NTV) program on "doing Business in Africa", Kenya's leading TV station K24's Capital Talk program "Movers and Shakers of Africa", KASS Media International, Radio Netherland's WorldWide Mobile banking program: "Africa’s next revolution", a DotAfrica generation soon to be born; Startup Success Radio in the US, and A4 Media Pan-African lifestyle TV program The Scoop, which presented her as a "serial entrepreneur, ICT activist and fondly referred to as 'Addis Hilton'."