CIRA Team

Byron Holland is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA).

Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for Internet governance, Byron’s leadership has brought CIRA to the forefront of innovation. At CIRA, Byron has led a wholesale rewrite of the .CA registry and related policies and business rules. Since the registry rewrite, .CA has become the fastest growing country code top-level domain (TLD) in the world, and the second fastest growing TLD overall.

Byron has developed a strong international profile for CIRA and the .CA top-level domain. He is vice-chair of the Country Codes Name Supporting Organization (ccNSO), the body that represents the interests of all country code top-level domains and leads policy development initiatives at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Byron is also an active participant in the United Nations co-ordinated Internet Governance Forum, and other Internet governance fora.

Prior to joining CIRA, Byron helped found the third largest coalition loyalty program in Canada, Futura Rewards. As the Chief Operating Officer at Futura, he oversaw the development and growth of the company from a small upstart to a publicly traded company with more than 100 brand partners and 400,000 members.

Byron maintains a world recognized blog, Public Domain (www.cirablog.ca). On his blog, he provides leading insight into issues of importance to Canadians on Internet-related matters. Byron can also be found on Twitter at @CIRA001.

Byron received a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from the University of Western Ontario and a Master of Business Administration from Queen’s University. He also holds his ICD.D designation from the Institute of Corporate Directors.

David Fowler became the Director, Marketing & Communications at CIRA in September 2008.

Most recently he was the Director of Marketing at the Royal Canadian Mint where he was responsible for product management, advertising/direct marketing, market research and brand strategies for two key lines of business. During his tenure he was a significant player in the transition team that led the company to profitability. He was also the Executive lead in the development of the 2010 Olympic Coin program. This program was the largest program of its type ever developed and launched by the Mint. It was characterized by innovation and a number of world firsts for a program of its type. Before joining the Mint, David worked in a variety of sectors in general management and MARCOM roles in both domestic and international markets.

David holds a Bachelor of Psychology degree and a Diploma in Business Administration from Wilfrid Laurier University.

Jacques Latour became the Director of Information Technology at CIRA in March 2010.

Jacques Latour is the Director of Information Technology (IT) at the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA). Jacques joined CIRA in March 2010, bringing with him more than 20 years of experience in the IT sector. As the Director of IT, Jacques is responsible for all of CIRA’s technical operations and development, including the .CA DNS infrastructure and the .CA registry management system. He also represents CIRA’s interests on the BIND 10 Steering Committee.

In the last five years, Jacques held the position of Practice Director at TRM Technologies and Ajilon Consulting. For the 11 years preceding these positions, he was the Chief Technology Officer at NUVO Network Management.

Jacques holds an Electronics Engineering Technologist diploma from Algonquin College and is ITIL v3 Foundation certified.

He lives with his family in Gatineau, Quebec.

Michael Stewart became General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at CIRA in April 2008.

Michael was Senior Legal Counsel at Alcatel-Lucent, and its predecessors Alcatel and Newbridge, for a number of years before he joined CIRA. At Alcatel-Lucent, he was most recently responsible for legal matters relating to the company’s global Internet Protocol Division, as well as for those related to AT&T, one of its largest customers.

Michael earned his Bachelor of Arts with Honours and his Bachelor of Laws from Queen’s University. He was called to the Ontario Bar in 1994.

Paul Havey became CIRA’s Director of Finance and Administration in February 2011.

Paul joined CIRA with more than 20 years experience in finance, corporate development and strategic planning from work in the Bell Canada Enterprises group, the Ottawa high-tech community and several not-for-profit organizations.

Prior to CIRA, Paul worked five years as Chief Financial Officer at the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, a leading health charity. Before that, he was CEO of Intelcan, a successful international aviation company headquartered in Ottawa. From 2002 to 2004, Paul was Vice President, Finance and Corporate Affairs at the Canadian Automobile Association, one of the largest not-for-profit member organizations in Canada.

Paul holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Marketing) with Honours from the University of Ottawa and is a Chartered Accountant.