Summary

  • Alicia Trotman placed sixth in ARIN’s 2017 Advisory Council election with 277 votes, sixteen fewer than the fifth winner. When Dan Alexander moved to the Board, the Council unanimously chose her as the next runner-up for a one-year vacancy.
  • She won a full elected Council term in 2018 with 381 votes. Her work in Barbados gave the Council practical experience from a small-island network and regulator.

Sixteen votes can close a door. ARIN’s 2017 election table put Alicia Trotman sixth in a race for five Advisory Council seats: 277 votes against fifth-place Chris Tacit’s 293. She had described herself at ARIN 40 as a telecom officer and civil society activist from Barbados, with a small regulator’s unusually broad desk: country-code domains, an exchange point, incident response and the move to IPv6. An island office rarely gets to say, “That belongs to another department,” and her candidate speech sounded like someone who knew it.

Then ARIN’s seating chart changed. Dan Alexander won a Board place and left his Council seat at year’s end. The Council’s 16 November minutes offered two options under its standing rules: leave the seat vacant or approach the next runner-up. Members unanimously selected Trotman for calendar 2018. At the moment of the vote, staff still had to ask her. This was a documented succession procedure, not an extra ballot conjured after dinner.

The voters had their say the next year. Trotman took 381 votes, 60.3 percent, and a three-year term beginning in 2019. In her 2024 voter-guide account, she listed work on the Barbados Internet Exchange Point and the value of meeting ARIN Fellows. ARIN’s current biography records further reelections. An operator’s local knowledge had acquired a durable place at the regional policy table.

There is a useful boundary in the guide itself: Council members serve as individuals for ARIN’s interests. Trotman carried Caribbean operating experience into the room; her authority came from the Council’s succession rule and later member ballots. That combination is sturdier than a sentimental claim that an island somehow acquired a permanent proxy vote.