Fadi Chehadé

Who is Fadi Chehadé?

Fadi Chehadé is an information technology executive, founder of RosettaNet and current Chief Executive Officer of ICANN.

Chehadé was born in Beirut, Lebanon. In 1985 he received his bachelor's degree in computer science from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University. The following year he completed his master's degree in engineering management at Stanford University. He became a naturalized US citizen in 1986.

Chehadé worked as a systems engineer for Bell Labs before founding Nett Information Products in 1987, a company to create and develop an Internet-based content management and sharing solution. Nett was acquired by Ingram Micro and Chehadé became their vice president in charge of customer information services.

In 1997 Chehadé conceived of a not-for-profit organization that would coordinate and develop standards for Business-to-business communications. He successfully convinced businesses, including Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, SAP, Nokia and Oracle Corporation, to back the program and the result was RosettaNet where he became its first CEO.

In 1999, Chehadé founded Viacore Inc. a B2B services provider, which was acquired by IBM in 2006. At which time he became IBM's vice president for global business development followed by general manager of their global technology services for Middle East/North Africa region. He then took over as CEO of CoreObjects Software, Inc., a developer of new product management software for businesses. CoreObjects was acquired in 2010 by Symphony Services.