[AT WORK]

BURL BURLINGAME / BBURLINGAME@STARBULLETIN.COM Karen Elizaga internet executive

Internet executive

Karen Elizaga chose the screaming
neon of cyberspace over the
powdered wigs of British law

KAREN ELIZAGA>>After I graduated from Punahou, I went to Columbia and earned a degree in English literature, then got my law degree from American University in Washington, D.C., met my husband in Hong Kong and moved to New York, where I specialized in general securities and corporate law. But then my husband was transferred to London and I needed to decide whether to practice British law.

That was several years ago and instead I thought, let's see what's happening in that space called the Internet. It's been an interesting adventure so far! I was one of the initial employees at Urbanfetch, but then the CEO and I left to work at Global Name Registry, one of the Top-Level-Domain sites approved in the last year. Our job is administering the dot-name domain, where individuals can have a presence on the Internet.

GNR.com's home is London, which certainly played a factor in ICANN's (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) decision, since so many of the big registries are American. My title is Vice President / Policy, and just our agreement with ICANN is four inches thick! It helps to be a lawyer to keep these agreements straight.

One of the basic things I do is lobby other Internet-provider constituencies and come to a consensus on policies. The Internet is still evolving and we have to work together, otherwise it's chaos.

We launch the dot-name registry on Jan. 15 and it's frenetic. Basically, I'm on the computer or on the phone 12 hours a day -- unless I'm yanked into a tech meeting to be shown some gizmo!

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