Advisory Council
Role
The Advisory Council serves in an advisory capacity to the Board of Trustees on Internet number resource policy and related matters. Adhering to the procedures in the Policy Development Process, the Advisory Council forwards consensus-based policy proposals to the Board for ratification.
The Advisory Council consists of 15 elected members. The President of ARIN is an ex-officio member, and acts as the liaison between the Board of Trustees and the Advisory Council. Read the Election Guidelines for more information on how Council members are nominated and elected.
Current Members of the Advisory Council
Biographies
Lily Edinam Botsyoe is a Ph.D. candidate in Information Technology at the University of Cincinnati, where she is part of the inaugural Presidential Fellowship Program. A former Adjunct Instructor, Lily is an active contributor to technology communities and an advocate for Women and Youth Inclusion, Accessibility, Cybersecurity, Privacy, and Digital Sustainability. She brings extensive experience working with critical security frameworks and regulations, including GDPR, ISO27001, NIST 800, HIPAA, and PCI DSS. She has a strong background in Internet governance and policy, serving as the Coordinator of the Ghana Youth Internet Governance Forum and a steering committee member for both the West Africa and Africa Youth Internet Governance Forums. She has participated in several Internet governance programs, including ARIN 51 and ARIN 54 Fellowships, the ICANN NextGen program at ICANN 77, and the ICANN 81 Fellowship. Additionally, her internship as an auditor for ISOC’s MANRS Program in 2022 and 2023 reflects her commitment to fostering secure, sustainable, and resilient internet operations. Lily was elected to the Advisory Council in 2024. Her current term expires 31 December 2027.
E. Marie Brierley, MBA, is founder and president of Saatvik Advisors, an Internet security consulting firm, as well as Saatvik Research, a non-profit organization formed to conduct Internet research specifically for IPv6 transition. She is a former ARIN Fellow and recipient of two ARIN community grants. She has served on the ARIN Fellowship Selection committee and has blogged for ARIN and APNIC, as well as presenting at APRICOT and IETF. She led the IPv6 transition effort for cisco.com. She is a former Director for Momentum for Health, Silicon Valley’s largest provider of mental health services. E. Marie holds a Master of Business Administration from Santa Clara University’s Leavey’s School of Business. She also completed Leavey’s Women’s Corporate Board Readiness Program and was the first to be seated on a board as a result of participation in this program. She serves on University of Nevada, Reno Center for Excellence in Disabilities. E. Marie is a former UNIX System Administrator, data architect and customer success lead for Qualcomm, Altera and Gigamon. She was elected to the Advisory Council in 2025. Her current term expires 31 December 2028.
Doug is currently the Chief Information & Technology Officer for Coordinated Care Services, Inc. (CCSI), a large mental and behavioral health services non-profit based in Rochester, NY, where he has led enterprise transformation since 2022, and nine years as Audit Committee Chair for Visions FCU, one of the largest credit unions in the United States. Prior to joining CCSI, Doug served for a decade in the public sector as CIO of two different county governments in New York State, and prior to public service he founded, worked for, and led several IT consulting businesses. Doug is active in numerous community events and organizations, including helping launch the LUMA Projection Arts Festival in Binghamton, NY - the largest projection mapping art festival in the USA. Doug holds a degree in Computer Science from Binghamton University and degrees in Business Administration and Computer Information Systems from SUNY Broome. He maintains the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) cybersecurity leadership certification, and is a National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) certified Board Director, in addition to several technical certifications. He was appointed to the AC for a one-year term to fill the vacancy of Robert Seastom’s seat in 2023 and elected to a three year term in 2023. His current term expires 31 December 2026.
Gerry E. George is an ICT professional, with over 25 years in the industry. He has a BA in Economics, and a MS in Management Information Systems. Long an advocate of the benefits and adoption of ICT as an essential tool in business and for national development and in helping to bridge the digital divide in developing economies, he participates in local and regional policy fora aimed at Telecommunications liberalization, ICT Policy and Legislation and in the regulation of the Telecommunications sector, having been a Commissioner with the National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (NTRC – Saint Lucia) since 2011. He serves as the President of the ICT Association of Saint Lucia (SLICTA), and is an active member of the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG), Caribbean ICT stakeholders Virtual Community (CIVIC) a participant in activities of other international organizations such as ISOC, ICANN at Large Structure (ALS) and frequently participates in local, regional and international fora on telecommunications and ICT matters. He operates his own ICT Consultancy – DigiSolv, providing ICT solutions for business enterprises and has participated in or advised on a number of ICT technical committees and policy consultations. He is a frequent go-to by other members of the local ICT fraternity for advice and consultations. Gerry was elected to the AC in 2022. His current term expires 31 December 2025.
Elizabeth has nearly 20 years experience in technical roles at multiple Tier 2/3 service providers. She is currently Senior Manager of Data Network Planning at Lightpath. Previously, she was a Principal Architect at Crown Castle for seven years. She has also held various planning, engineering, and operations positions at Lightower, PAETEC, and Cavalier. In these roles, she has been responsible for all aspects of network platform architecture, strategy, and policy including number resource allocation and routing policies, and has shepherded the processes for IPv4 resource acquisition and organizational transfers. Her areas of focus include providing the perspective of ISPs that are growing and dealing with the constraints of scarce IPv4 resources and expanding IPv6 advocacy to enterprise organizations. Elizabeth was elected to the Advisory Council in 2023 and her current term expires 31 December 2026.
Bill is a computer networking generalist with deep expertise in network protocols, resilient and scalable Linux software development, C programming, UNIX and Linux systems administration, and Internet security. Bill is a direct holder of both modern and legacy ARIN number resources. His garage is multihomed on the Internet with IPv4 and IPv6 using AS 11875. He has a degree in computer science. He has been the lead engineer for an ISP, has been in and out of government, worked for political organizations, worked for the intelligence community, and has built novel systems for Amazon and Facebook. As proprietor of Dirtside Systems, a small business, Bill currently consults with the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) helping academic research scientists with BGP and network measurement products. Bill was elected to the Advisory Council in 2024 and his current term expires 31 December 2027.
Kat Hunter has been a number resource strategist and an active member of the ARIN community since 2004. She manages the number resources for voice, video, and data for both the commercial and residential areas of Comcast. She also manages IPv4 recycling within the organization while new IPv6 space is deployed. Kat has a broad yet technical view of a large ISP down to end customers, which gives her a unique view of the information and technical requirements needed to make inclusive decisions while working on policy. She also occasionally assists the business unit and security teams with IP fraud evaluations. Kat has also spent time as Communications Chair for TechWomen Philadelphia (2017) and is currently a member of TechWomen South Jersey and Net-grrls. Kat was elected to the Advisory Council in 2018, and re-elected in 2021 and 2024. She was also part of the ARIN Community Grant Program Selection Committee in 2021 and 2023. She served as Advisory Council Vice Chair from January 2021 through December 2023 and as the Chair of the Advisory Council in 2024. Her current term expires 31 December 2027.
Brian is currently Director of Operations for Virginia Tech Network Infrastructure & Services, leading an Escalation team of IT subject matter experts. He is a Certified Scrum Professional, member of the ScrumAlliance, lifetime member of Mike Cohn’s Agile Mentors Community, and a certified IPv6 Engineer and member of the IPv6 Forum. He has worked in the higher education electronics and telecommunications industry since 1984. He was part of the network team at Virgina Tech deploying IPv6 on production networks in 1997 and transforming to fully dual stack networks by world IPv6 launch in 2012. He helped VT procure additional IPv4 address space to augment our legacy address blocks just before ARIN was completely depleted of IPv4 address space. He also helped VT procure /32 IPv6 address space to replace old MAX blocks. He has served on other advisory councils for Network Monitoring software and served on the Board of Directors for the AHECTA organization. He has been active in the ARIN and NANOG community since 2007. He participated in the 2019 EDUCAUSE IPv6 panel along with other ARIN members to promote the use IPv6. He is the author of Virginia Tech’s IPv6 Case Study on ARIN’s website. Brian was elected in 2021 to serve a one-year term on the AC and was reelected in 2022 and 2025. Brian has served multiple terms on the ARIN Fellowship Selection committee, has also served on the Nomination Committee, the NRPM Working Group, and the Policy Experience working group. He is currently the chair of the NRPM Working Group. His current term expires 31 December 2028.
Kaitlyn Pellak is a Technical Business Developer at Amazon Web Services where she works on IPv4 acquisitions. Prior to that role, she also worked for an IP address broker, conducting extensive research of legacy IPv4 assets in ARIN and all other RIRs hoping to determine rightful ownership of the space. These roles have led her to work to have a thorough understanding of not only ARIN policy, but the number resource policy of the other RIRs as well – with a focus on policy related to legacy resource holders. She has additional experience working in the non-profit sector where she spent a year and a half managing the membership activities for a higher-education focused non-profit. She gained experience in policy writing, membership engagement, and marketing. Kaitlyn was elected to the Advisory Council in 2023 and her current term expires 31 December 2026.
Gus Reese is the Sr. Director for Edge Engineering for Cogent Communications Inc. He has been in this role for 13 years. His current duties include managing all Cogent IP resources, point of contact for each of the five RIRs, directing a team of nineteen engineers who are responsible for all customer and peer transit connections and Cogent’s own global peering exchange. Prior to that he was a senior network engineer responsible for engineering solutions for customers to connect to each other and the rest of the Internet and helped deploy network wide role out of IPv6 in 2007. Gus got his start in the Internet industry in 1998 working for a local dial-up provider in Fort Worth, Texas. Gus was elected to the Advisory Council in October of 2022 and reelected in 2025. His term expires 31 December 2028.
Leif Sawyer is currently working as a network engineer at GCI Communication Corp., having been employed there for nearly 30 years. His areas of focus include IPv4 and IPv6 deployment strategy, network and security architecture, VOIP infrastructure, and network management automation. Previously, Leif has worked for the University of Alaska Anchorage and as an independent contractor in the telecommunications industry. He was elected to the AC in October of 2014, and re-elected in 2017, 2020, & 2023. His current term expires 31 December 2026.
Alicia Trotman is a seasoned federal government contractor with more than 20 years of experience driving progress in telecommunications regulation and ICT development. She possesses advanced expertise in crafting regulatory and monitoring policies specifically tailored to promote and maintain competitive environments, with a key focus on the unique challenges and opportunities within Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Alicia’s commitment to governance is further highlighted by her multiple terms on the Advisory Council, serving since her initial appointment in January 2018 and her reelections in 2018, 2021 and 2024. Her current term expires 31 December 2027.
Matthew Wilder is a Senior Engineer with TELUS Communications, a leading ISP and technology company headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. At TELUS Matthew is responsible for IP Address Inventory strategy. Matthew serves the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) including past roles as Chair of the Vancouver Section and West Area Chair of IEEE Canada. He has written articles for IEEE Canadian Review, as well as blogs for ARIN, ISOC, and other industry publications. Matthew holds a Bachelor of Applied Sciences from the University of British Columbia as well as a Master of Business Administration from the University of Victoria. Matthew was elected to the AC in October of 2020, and re-elected in 2023. His current term expires 31 December 2026.
Alison is a network engineer for the State of Oregon, supporting a diverse wide-area network that serves more than 40,000 customers. For nearly 30 years, she has enjoyed watching the state’s infrastructure evolve from a patchwork of dial-up circuits into a resilient, mature enterprise network. Her responsibilities include network architecture and design, dynamic network analytics, pre-deployment application testing, and the overarching mission of keeping the network fast, reliable, and available. She also serves as a backup Trusted Community Representative (TCR) for the Root DNS Key Signing Ceremonies, is a member of the INTC Advisory Council, and runs a small network consulting LLC for non-profits. Alison was elected to the AC in October of 2016, and was re-elected in 2019, 2022, and 2025. Her current term expires 31 December 2028.
Chris Woodfield is a 25-plus-year industry veteran, having served in architecture, engineering, and software development roles at Twitter, Salesforce.com, i3d.net, Drivenets, and other companies. In addition to serving on the Advisory Council, Chris was a member of the North American Network Operators’ Group (NANOG) Program Committee from 2016 to 2024. Chris was first elected to the Advisory Council in October 2016 and was reelected in 2017, 2021, and 2024. His current term expires 31 December 2027.