Brett McDowell a former security advisor at PayPal was yesterday appointed as Founding vice Chair and Executive Director of Hedera Hashgraph’s Governing Council. Hedera Hashgraph is a public ledger created to diversify governance through scalable distributed consensus.
McDowell has over 20 years’ experience within the IT industry and was also a founding executive at DMARC.org, IDESG, the Kantara Initiative, and the FIDO Alliance, a position which he still holds.
Furthermore, McDowell has wide experience with multi-stakeholder governance structures given that he has served on the advisory board, or boards of industry coalitions such as PCI SSC, NCSA, MAAWG and StopBadWare among others.
The appointment follows the unveiling of the initial group of Hedera’s Governing Council during its inaugural annual assembly where the governing council met for the first time in Seoul, South Korea.
Hedera’s CEO, Mance Harmon, commented:
As we have laid out from the beginning, we believe that a strong governing council is crucial for the long-term stability and decentralization of a public ledger.
In conjunction with bringing the initial group of Governing Council members on board, we are pleased to also take the next step in its development with the appointment of Brett to the roles of Executive Director and Vice Chair. His experience in running some of the largest, most distributed coalitions in the technology industry will be invaluable as we grow this council to maturity.
The new Executive Director, Brett McDowell, explained:
Throughout my career, I have looked to join innovative organizations that are making a fundamental difference in the ways people use and benefit from internet technology.
Hedera has not only disruptive technology that sets the bar for DLT performance and security, but also a best-of-breed governance model that will ensure the network is protected from abuse and fragmentation – making it suitable for mass adoption. I am delighted to be joining Hedera at this time to advise and help further develop this global governing council.
McDowell was the head of ecosystem security in his previous role at PayPal where led the development and implementation of projects aimed at improving the company’s internet security. He currently serves on the Boston Federal Reserve Bank’s Mobile Payments Industry Workgroup and is a fellow at the National Center for Digital Government at UMASS.