The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is honored to announce Stephen Deerhake, a long-time member of the ICANN community, as the recipient of the 2025 ICANN Community Excellence Award.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is honored to announce Stephen Deerhake, a long-time member of the ICANN community, as the recipient of the 2025 ICANN Community Excellence Award.
A panel of representatives from ICANN Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees selected Deerhake in recognition of his commitment to ICANN's multistakeholder model. ICANN President and CEO Kurtis Lindqvist presented the award to Deerhake during the ICANN82 Welcome Ceremony in Seattle, Washington, USA, on Monday, 10 March 2025.
The ICANN Community Excellence Award honors members of the ICANN community who have deeply invested in consensus-based solutions and contributed in a substantive way to policymaking within the ICANN ecosystem.
Deerhake represents AS Domain Registry, the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) manager for American Samoa (.as), in the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO). He has served on the ccNSO Council as an elected member from the North America region since November 2015. Deerhake made significant contributions to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority stewardship transition process as a participant in the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) and represented the ccNSO on the Empowered Community Administration (ECA) for more than four years. During his service on the ECA, he served as penholder and chaired the first two Approval Action Community Forums, in 2017 and 2019.
Deerhake played a key role in the third ccNSO Policy Development Process (ccPDP-3) as chair of two working groups: One on the review mechanisms for decisions on delegation, transfer, revocation, and retirement of ccTLDs (ccPDP3-RM), and another on the retirement of ccTLDs (ccPDP3-RET). Additionally, Deerhake has been involved in Tech Day since its inception as a member of the ccNSO's Technical Working Group.
Deerhake served on the ICANN Community Excellence Award Selection Panels in 2019, 2020, and 2021. He continues to serve as a ccNSO councilor from the North America region.
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