As vice president of public policy and government relations at Verisign, Keith Drazek is responsible for actively and broadly participating in the development and advocacy of Verisign’s policy interests in multiple arenas involving internet identifiers directly affecting product and services offered by Verisign. Keith brings over 30 years of experience and leadership in the technical functions of the internet and the Domain Name System (DNS), internet policy development, government relations, external affairs and channel management.

Keith joined Verisign in June 2010, and during his tenure he has focused on internet policy development and implementation, as well as government and stakeholder relations. Prior to that, Keith spent 10 years at the United States Department of State, where he developed understanding of the workings of government, diplomacy, leadership and collaboration. Before that, for over a decade, Keith held several management positions in the domain name industry, including a registrar and a registry, where he became actively engaged in the top-level domain and global internet governance space, advocating for the evolution of the governmental multi-stakeholder model.

Keith has been an active member in the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) multi-stakeholder community for more than 20 years, most recently serving as chair of the Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) Phase 2A Working Group. Prior to that, he served as chair of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council, as chair of the Registries Stakeholder Group (RySG) and was elected to the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) Council. Keith was also a member of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Transition Coordination Group (ICG) and a key contributor to the IANA Transition’s ICANN Accountability and Transparency Cross-Community Working Group (CCWG). He has given many educative presentations to groups within the DNS ecosystem on the role of internet infrastructure providers and the key players within that space.

Keith studied international affairs and national security policy at George Washington University.