Dr. Paul Twomey, the Australian who was ICANN's first Governmental Advisory Committee chair and later leveraged his governmental and private sector connections to become the Chief Executive Officer of ICANN, indicated that his term as CEO would not be renewed at the opening of the ICANN meeting in Mexico. Under Twomey's leadership ICANN weathered the World Summit on the Information Society and experienced a more than 10-fold increase in the size of its budget. He has been in that position so long that some view him as the personification of ICANN.
It is unknown whether a replacement has been chosen. Names we have heard floated include David Conrad, the current Vice President of Research and IANA Strategy; Markus Kummer, Executive Director of the UN Internet Governancve Forum, Peter Dengate Thrush, the current Chairman of ICANN's Board, and Vladimir Putin. (Just kidding on that last one.; it came to mind after reading from Twomey's statement in the transcript: “The Board has asked me to stay on after it appoints a successor to have a period of handover with the new appointee. During this transition period I shall be appointed to the new position of Senior President.”) Seriously, IGP neither endorses nor proposes a CEO replacement, we are just reporting names that some people are noting. In that regard we encourage readers to float their own names of desirable candidates in the comment section below.
