Emerging Leaders of Tech Q&A: Dana Cramer

About two years ago, I found myself in a taxi home after getting a wisdom tooth removed. As my taxi driver looped us through Toronto’s downtown traffic, he began telling me about his life and interests, then asked me how I would define a leader, as he was taking a remote course on the subject. As I paid the fare, he answered his own question and said, “a leader is someone who has followers”.

However, my internet governance journey has taught me that this is not necessarily the right definition of ‘leader.’

In my view, a leader is someone who practices leadership. Leadership is a collective effort which comes from a common purpose, shared decision-making, and dedication to identifiable values.

Over 2024, I maneuvered through the global internet governance community and saw firsthand the way stakeholders around the world work to be leaders and ensure this leadership allows for a common, stable, and secure internet for all. These leaders don’t necessarily have an abundance of followers — most people don’t even know what internet governance is — but these internet leaders come together with the shared purpose of keeping the internet functional so that everyone with an internet connection around the world can share in its wealth, knowledge, and communicative capacity.

We are a better and more interconnected global community thanks to the maintainers of the internet who dedicate their time to the broad space of internet governance.

Over the past year, I was lucky to be part of various internet governance mentorship and fellowship initiatives. These included the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) NextGen and Fellowship programs (ICANN79 and ICANN81), the Internet Society’s Youth Ambassadors program and the Internet Governance Forum’s (IGF) Youth Mentorship Program. During this time, I also worked to build Youth IGF Canada – Canada’s youth IGF which also doubles as a youth-led non-profit dedicated to building the next generation of Canadian internet leaders. I am also a PhD Candidate researching internet governance, so you can probably tell this topic is what occupies most of my time (in addition to my wonderful Saint Bernard puppy!).

What I have found helpful in my leadership journey is to be part of all these intersecting and overlapping internet governance spaces. Opportunities like these have made me into a stronger internet governance leader in Canada. These programs opened their doors to me so that I could open my eyes to the complexities of internet governance, its global arrangements and multiple governance arenas, and the need for new stakeholders from all countries around the world to join these spaces for maintaining the internet. The most pertinent new stakeholders to this area are youth.

Within internet governance, stakeholders are arranged based on their professional backgrounds. This categorisation immediately limits youth participants as they might still be students, not yet have started a career, or are still trying out various job placements to find the ‘right fit’ and therefore do not have a set stakeholder identity.

What youth become in this internet ecology, are not the ones who will build the internet, serve customers, report to government departments, or champion civil society initiatives; instead, we as youth maintain the internet’s multi-stakeholder governance arrangement and the common values this purport.

We are responsible for ensuring the next generation of leaders that are prepared, knowledgeable, and ready to keep the internet open and trustworthy for all. In this, we sustain multi-stakeholder internet governance by ensuring its generational continuity.

In 2025 we are entering a pressing period for internet governance, referred to as the 20 Year Review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+20) completed by the United Nations (UN). What’s most pertinent in WSIS+20 is to ensure internet governance arenas like the IGF will continue and receive a renewed mandate, that multistakeholderism will still be championed, and there will be clear alignment of the newly UN passed Global Digital Compact, which was ratified at the 2024 UN General Assembly in New York.

Youth need to be part of these conversations. We must identify our role in multi-stakeholder internet governance to be included as a defined stakeholder group in the future. If we do not speak for our purpose in this system to be included, we will be the ones who must live the longest with the consequences of any policies which did not recognise our stakeholder group in consultation.

Becoming an internet leader involves participating in internet governance spaces. So go out, get involved with your Youth IGF, start a youth IGF if you need to, reach out for support to your country’s ccTLD (e.g., .ca for Canada, .au for Australia), and make your voice heard in the WSIS+20 consultations. If we don’t speak, we cannot be heard.

You might not have followers as you enter the internet governance world - this is just part of being new to it - and it can be scary to start such a new journey! But what’s beautiful about internet governance is that it’s filled with community, and at the end of the day, that’s where we’ll find how to become leaders within.