Executive Suite & Management

Catrina Ahlbach

Chief of Staff, Manager of the Office of the CEO

Catrina joined W3C in December 2024. A long time web developer and evangelist, she is now working on a Masters in Library and Information Studies.

Sylvia Cadena

Chief Development Officer

I joined the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as Chief Development Officer in September 2024 to focus on setting direction and expanding development portfolio across internationalization, accessibility, privacy and security for the Web, ensuring the longevity of the organization by defining a vision for financial security.

I am a seasoned international development expert with 30 years’ experience across Latin America and the Asia Pacific. I have extensive experience in fundraising, design, management and reporting at local, national and regional level, leading purposeful collaborations that strategically use the Internet and the Web for social, economical, and cultural development.

Before W3C, I worked at APNIC for 16 years. During my tenure, I worked to establish the Information Society Innovation Fund (ISIF Asia); the Seed Alliance and more recently the APNIC Foundation, where I worked to expand its grant making, allocating close to 11M USD to close to 200 initiatives across 32 economies. I also led the design and implementation of a number of training and professional development initiatives addressing gender diversity and social inclusion in APAC.

Throughout my career I have served the Internet technical community on a variety of roles across a number of advisory bodies and selection committees related to Internet Governance, innovation, women in technology and professional development initiatives with a focus on the Internet industry, at a global and regional level. I have addressed many national, regional and international conferences.

Read more in my LinkedIn profile.

Seth Dobbs

Chief Executive Officer

Seth is W3C President & Chief Executive Officer (CEO) since November 2023.

Seth reports to the W3C Board of Directors and takes responsibility for the fiscal integrity, financial stability and revenue generation of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). He leads the change management and integration efforts for W3C to create new offerings, seek broader financial support opportunities, and succeed as a public-interest not-for-profit with global partners. He oversees shaping and running W3C in line with its mission to lead the Web to its full potential.

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Christine Gefaell

Director, Legal & Compliance

Christine joined the W3C Team in October 2024 as Director of Legal and Compliance to ensure W3C operates in full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations throughout the world, to advise on all legal matters, to guide the organization's policies, ultimately furthering our mission and goals.

Prior to joining W3C, Christine worked as an associate general counsel in the ethics and compliance department at a global, biotech company focusing on areas such as antitrust, trade compliance, anti-bribery/anti-corruption, human rights, and risk management, generally. Previous to this corporate position, she worked in litigation as a defense, professional malpractice attorney. Christine is licensed in both New Jersey and Connecticut.

See her LinkedIn profile for more information.

Philippe Le Hegaret

VP, Technical Strategy

Philippe Le Hegaret is the Strategy and Project Lead for W3C, responsible for the technical mission of the Consortium. As Project Lead, he is responsible to meet all of the milestones of all of the groups, facilitate the work of Team Contacts, Chairs, and Editors, and drive the work necessary to achieve operational success. He is the current co-Chair of the W3C Process Community Group. Until 2016, he was for the former W3C Interaction Domain, which produced frontend Web technologies including HTML5, CSS3, SVG, WOFF, or Web APIs. Prior to 2009, Philippe lead the W3C Architecture Domain, which produced the W3C Core technologies in the area of XML, Web Services, and Internationalization. He is a former Chair of the Document Object Model (DOM) Working Group.

Prior to joining W3C, Philippe promoted the use of XML inside Bull in 1998, also focusing on the interaction between XML and object structures. He wrote the first version of the CSS validator in 1997.

Philippe holds a Master's Degree in Computer Science from the University of Nice (France).

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Coralie Mercier

Director, Marketing & Communications

Coralie is Director of W3C Marketing & Communications. Since February 2015, she manages the Consortium's Comm activities, including messaging, press relations, W3C website, branding, marketing, internal communications as well as Public and Member communications. Previously and since 2005, Coralie was W3C Communications Team assistant.

Since joining W3C in January 1999 with degrees in secretarial work and English as a foreign language, Coralie held a number of positions such as W3C Europe team assistant, W3C Europe administration manager (2001-2006). She was team contact for the W3C Advisory Board (2005-2017), helped with community outreach and developer relations.

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Ralph Swick

Chief Operating Officer

Ralph joined W3C in January 1997, to focus on the Privacy and Demographics project. As that project (now called P3P) was starting, Ralph also started the Metadata project. The Resource Description Framework became a full-time responsibility when the Metadata Activity turned into the Semantic Web Activity. In 2007 Ralph became the leader of the Technology and Society Domain and in 2009 was appointed Acting Chief Operating Officer. As of 2010 the 'acting' qualifier was removed. Then in 2022 Ralph was appointed as Interim Chief Executive Officer of the new W3C, Inc. In November 2023 when W3C's permanent CEO joined, Ralph resumed his role as Chief Operating Officer.

Ralph came to W3C from the X Consortium, where he was Technical Director for the X Window System. Ralph brings to W3C both a systems background and an application background. Long involved with the X Window System, Ralph was one of the architects of the Xt Intrinsics (user interface) toolkit.

Prior to joining the X Consortium, Ralph was a software engineer for Digital Equipment Corporation in their Office Systems Advanced Development Group. There he worked on information filtering tools (software agents) and computer-supported cooperative work tools. Before that, Ralph was in Digital's Corporate Research Group working at MIT Project Athena. Ralph holds a BS in Physics and Mathematics from Carnegie-Mellon University.

Ralph's interests are in applications of Web technologies to support human-human interaction, especially over time and distance.

Ken Troshinsky

Chief Financial Officer

Ken joined the W3C Team in February 2024 as Chief Financial Officer (CFO).