Summary

  • APNIC says 49 people from 21 economies joined three online sessions on barriers to community leadership; 12 people answered a voluntary follow-up survey, while a dedicated Orbit mailing list received no submissions.
  • The Phase 1 report identifies unclear leadership pathways, perceived election disadvantages and limited time, resources or employer support, but explicitly says the voluntary cohort is not statistically representative of the wider community.
  • APNIC can preserve de-identification while publishing an aggregate participation funnel that shows who was reached, where engagement fell away, which remedies the EC chose and whether future nomination and leadership pathways broadened.

APNIC’s first report on diversity in community leadership does something useful that many consultations avoid: it publishes enough numbers to expose the limits of its own evidence. Across three online listening sessions held between 18 June and 11 August 2026, 49 participants from 21 economies took part. Twelve people completed a voluntary post-session survey. A dedicated Orbit mailing list received no submissions.

Those figures are not a verdict on the diversity of APNIC leadership, and APNIC does not present them that way. The report says the findings are not statistically representative of the wider community. Participation was voluntary, and a public session may have affected what people felt comfortable saying. That limitation is not a footnote to be overcome with more confident prose. It is the starting point for deciding what evidence the next stage should publish.

The consultation began after the Executive Council asked the Secretariat to examine barriers and friction points affecting whether people put themselves forward as EC candidates or take part in other leadership roles. The timing matters. APNIC’s 2026 by-law resolutions passed, extending EC terms from two to three years and introducing a limit of three consecutive terms. Term limits make succession a practical governance question: an institution needs not merely willing candidates, but a visible path by which wider participation can become credible leadership experience.

The Phase 1 cohort was not empty or uniform. APNIC reports that 59% of participants were men and 41% women, and that 43% were APNIC Members or Account Holders. Participants included community leaders and people from National Internet Registries, network operator groups and other organizations. Their discussions treated diversity as broader than gender, including geography, skills, professional background and experience.

The report groups the barriers into three themes. Participants described an unclear pathway into leadership and limited information about roles, obligations, required skills, time commitments and election processes. Some said election dynamics appeared to favour established candidates, incumbents or voting blocs, particularly at the expense of less represented economies. Others described the cost of sustained volunteer work when employers do not recognize or support it.

These are participant perceptions, not findings that an election rule is defective or that any actor manipulated a vote. The distinction matters. A consultation can surface a concern before the institution has tested its scale or cause. The useful next step is therefore not to turn quotations into conclusions, but to connect each concern to an evidence question and a decision.

The voluntary survey illustrates both the value and the constraint. Ten of 12 respondents selected professional background and expertise as a diversity priority. Sixty-seven per cent selected limited awareness of leadership pathways; 42% selected lack of clarity about how to get involved; and 58% selected lack of time. These percentages help describe the twelve respondents. Without the denominator, they would sound larger and more representative than they are. With it, they become a candid signal that can guide better measurement.

APNIC’s participants proposed practical remedies: clearer descriptions of leadership responsibilities and pathways; more information about candidates; public questions and answers; review of nomination, election and voting mechanisms; mentoring, governance education and leadership programmes; and outreach to underrepresented communities. The report also records examples raised from ICANN, auDA, NZNOG and other processes. These are proposals for consideration, not decisions already made by the EC.

The consultation now moves into a second stage. At the reporting freeze on 8 September, APNIC had scheduled a dedicated session at APNIC 62 for 9 September, with in-person and remote participation. Written submissions were due to remain open until 30 September. APNIC says findings from both stages will be combined into a public synthesis report, with the EC considering next steps and a report shared after its December meeting. None of those future steps is treated here as completed.

APNIC has also promised that published findings will be aggregate or de-identified and that individual participants will not be named. That protection is compatible with stronger accountability. The institution does not need to expose identities to show how participation worked. It can publish sufficiently broad bands for geography, gender, professional background, experience and membership relationship; disclose the number invited, registered, attending and responding through each channel; and explain where small numbers require suppression to protect people.

The result would be a privacy-preserving participation funnel. Its first stage would show the outreach universe and channels used. The second would show registrations, unique participants, repeat participation and drop-off between listening sessions, the survey, Orbit and the APNIC 62 session. The third would connect each barrier theme to an EC disposition, a named institutional owner and a target date. Later stages could track whether mentoring, candidate information or election-process changes affected nominations, candidacies and leadership appointments over successive cycles.

This is not a demand for demographic quotas or a claim that representation can be reduced to one score. A leadership pipeline has several points of friction, and the same intervention can affect groups differently. A public funnel would instead let Members distinguish three questions that are often collapsed: who heard about the opportunity, who participated in the consultation, and who later felt able and qualified to seek a leadership role.

The zero submissions to Orbit deserve the same disciplined treatment. It may reflect channel design, timing, awareness, preference for live discussion, concern about public attribution or other causes not established by the current record. The number is a diagnostic prompt, not proof of apathy. Stage 2 can test the channel by asking participants how they learned about the consultation, which mode they preferred, and what prevented use of the mailing list.

APNIC already maintains a quarterly community-demographics page built from conference, survey, training and other participation data. That makes a denominator strategy more plausible, but not automatic. The sources measure different populations and periods. The synthesis report should therefore state which reference population is used for each comparison and avoid presenting the consultation cohort as a miniature of the whole community.

The leadership question ultimately belongs to governance, not communications. A polished report can describe themes; only the EC can show which themes changed a decision. The post-December record should give each material barrier a stable identifier, summarize the evidence and limitations, record whether the EC accepted, modified, deferred or rejected a response, and link the outcome to any change in candidate guidance, election oversight, mentoring or succession planning.

That ledger would preserve the consultation’s most important distinction. Participants provide experience and proposals. The Secretariat gathers and analyses them. The EC decides what to do. Members and the wider community then need evidence of the conversion between those stages. Names can remain protected; the institutional choices should not.

Sources

  1. https://www.apnic.net/community/community-consultations/
  2. https://www.apnic.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Diversity-Community-Consultation-Phase-1-Report_01092026.pdf
  3. https://www.apnic.net/about-apnic/organization/structure/proposed-by-law-reform-2026
  4. https://blog.apnic.net/2026/08/27/ec-chairs-preview-september-ec-meeting-and-apnic-62/
  5. https://www.apnic.net/community/community-demographics/