Today, the General Assembly of DENIC eG approved by majority vote the decision of the DENIC Supervisory Board to appoint Thomas Keller as one of the two full-time members of the Cooperative's Executive Board. He will replace Dr. Jörg Schweiger, who will terminate his contract as of 31 December 2021, as planned as of 1 January 2022. Andreas Musielak continues to sit on the Executive Board as full-time member, and Martin Küchenthal and Sebastian Röthler also remain honorary members of the Executive Board.

Thomas Keller brings in to the new position long years of comprehensive experience and expertise in the international domain industry: As Director Domain Services of 1&1 IONOS SE he has built up and been responsible for the domain business of today's largest Internet service provider in Europe since 1997. In this position, he also established good connections to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), where he represented the European registrars in ICANN's sub-organisation GNSO (Generic Names Supporting Organization) from 2003 to 2008. Thomas Keller already is well familiar with the special characteristics and challenges of DENIC eG as the manager of the German namespace on the Internet (.de) from the perspective of the DENIC Supervisory Board, of which he was a member from 2007 to May 2021, holding the position of chair since 2013.

Dr. Jörg Schweiger was a member of the DENIC Executive Board since 2007. In this role, he was in charge of the functional divisions Technology, Information Security and Research as well as Public Relations and Government & Regulatory Affairs and represented DENIC eG in multiple national and international expert bodies and committees.

The Chairman of the DENIC Supervisory Board, Dr. Johannes Loxen, expressed his thanks in the name of the Cooperative to the Executive Board member Dr. Jörg Schweiger, leaving at the end of the year, and welcomed his successor as of 2022, Thomas Keller: "I am pleased that with Tom Keller we were able to win an experienced member of the domain industry for DENIC. He will seamlessly continue the successful work of Jörg Schweiger."

The new member to the Executive Board Thomas Keller expressed his joy at his future challenge as part of the management of DENIC eG: "I am looking forward very much to my new role and am very pleased about the clear vote of the members. The cooperative model is something very special and I am proud to be actively involved in shaping the further development of DENIC."