Desiree Miloshevic

Desiree‘s experience spans across a network of UK-based Internet start-ups, numerous national and international NGOs, as well as institutions such as the UN, where she served as a special policy adviser on Internet governance issues. She has over 20 years of non-exec board experience based in the USA, UK, and SEE, while over the last decade, she has been focusing on building open-source communities. Her latest initiative within the SEE region includes a project focused on sustainable development and climate change, while she continues to run an annual hackathon (DESCON) and advocate for user’s digital rights.

Ms Desiree Miloshevic has broad technical and policy roles experience in both private and nonprofit sectors. She deploys her expertise in three main areas, being an Internet public servant, an entrepreneur and a connector.

In her role as Internet public servant, Ms Miloshevic participated actively in the areas of Internet technical coordination and Domain Name System policy since 1994.

Desiree was first elected to the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society back in 2004, a not-for-profit organisation with the mission: Internet is for everyone, as well as to the Board of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility in 2004. She served as Special Adviser to the UN Under-Secretary and Chair of the Internet Governance Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group (2006-2009). She continues to volunteer her time and fundraise for many different local and global Internet communities, organisations and institutions to keep the Internet open and accessible.

Over two decades of productive interactions with Internet pioneers, regulators, intergovernmental leaders, academics, artists, and community activists throughout the world provides her with a unique set of resources with which to engage the often complex cross-sectoral challenges of Internet technical coordination and governance.

Desiree is a founding member of ISOC Serbia Belgrade Chapter and Hacklab Belgrade, as well as an active Board member of ISOC England UK. As a visiting associate at the OII, she championed the university-industry collaboration in the field of Internet governance. In 1993 she joined UK Demon Internet ISP as DNS hostmaster and was a Senior Advisor, Public Policy and International Affairs Advisor at Afilias Plc from 2001 to 2021. As of 2021, Desiree co-chairs the RIPE Cooperation Working Group.

One of her more recent community building and networking exercises is DESCON, an Internet of Things security and ecology hackathon, that she first self-fundraised and organised in the summer of 2015. As of 2018, she chairs the board of the SHARE Foundation that champions the protection of personal data and digital rights.

Her interests are wide and span from topics such as trust in Internet governance organisations to developing better processes for multistakeholder, bottom-up public policymaking, and keeping the Internet open and available to all people around the world. She is also a keen swimmer and traveller, having visited more than 130 countries