Functional organization

Overview

The functional organization is designed to achieve several objectives:

  • Define our “One W3C” approach in service of our mission
  • Ambassadorship
  • Delegation and clear lines of accountability and responsibility

One W3C

The core principle to the functional organization is that we are One W3C, regardless of whether we work for the U.S. corporation, a Partner organization, or a Professional Employment Outsourcer (PEO). We are all part of a team that first and foremost, serves W3C’s mission to make the web work, for everyone.

All of our functions either directly serve our mission or enable work that serves our mission. In fact, it often requires collaboration across multiple functions to achieve key outcomes. The functional descriptions in this document give some insight into how this collaboration works, but does not provide prescriptive detail.

Ambassadorship

Regardless of which function(s) we belong to, we are all ambassadors for W3C and our mission, whether we are interacting with members or with people and organizations that are not a part of the consortium.

Providing clarity on our functions and how they serve our mission is intended to help each of us in our interactions outside of our team in seeing potential opportunities to advance our mission and to potentially help build connections. Where appropriate, function leads will provide updates to help keep us informed.

Delegation, Accountability, Responsibility

One of the most important aspects of this organizational approach is to create a delegation model based on accountability and responsibility. This means that the CEO is delegating decision-making responsibilities to each function lead and holding them accountable for achieving objectives that serve our mission. Doing so enables our organization to move more quickly and better support the needs of our stakeholders.

This approach will also help provide clarity on resourcing. When a function lead determines they are unable to meet objectives and/or the needs of the organization, they will work with the CEO to seek more resources and/or changes in priorities. This is why it’s important to not try and work around this organization structure - doing so only hides problems. This also means that as we align our Full-Time Equivalent Management System (FTEMS) with our functional areas, the CEO asks the Senior Leadership Team to approve what is tracked in their respective functional area.

Executive Suite & Senior Leadership Team

View the team

Leader:

Seth Dobbs, CEO

Responsibilities:

Overall corporate administration and team management, including regional operations leadership.

Contribution to Mission:

Drives the work of the Team in alignment with mission and vision. Provides support to enable team success in fulfilling our mission.

The following are the members of our leadership team and each leads a functional area. Each is accountable to the CEO for achieving objectives in service of our mission and as such, they are the final decision makers for their respective functions, regardless of their level or reporting structure. These are the people to go to if there are any questions about the function that they are responsible for.

Subsequent sections describe some of these areas in further detail. Over time, leads will be providing more details, policies/procedures etc., as needed.

Senior Leadership Team Members:

  • Catrina Ahlbach, Chief of Staff, Manager of the Office of the CEO
  • Sylvia Cadena, Chief Development Officer
  • Christine Gefaell, Director, Legal & Compliance
  • Dominique Hazael-Massieux, VP, Global Impact
  • Vivien Lacourba, Director, Systems
  • Philippe Le Hegaret, VP, Technical Strategy
  • An Qi (Angel) Li, Director, Chapters
  • Coralie Mercier, Director, Marketing & Communications
  • Ralph Swick, Chief Operating Officer
  • Ken Troshinsky, Chief Financial Officer
  • Naomi Yoshizawa, Director, Global Member Relations

Community & Global Outreach

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Leadership:

  • Seth Dobbs, CEO
  • Dominique Hazael-Massieux, VP, Global Impact
  • Sylvia Cadena, Chief Development Officer

Responsibilities:

Strategizing, coordinating, and executing our work to build, improve, and maintain relationships with external stakeholders, including membership, potential members, chapters, developer outreach, etc.

Contribution to Mission:

Establishes and enhances relationships that help us further advance our mission. Helps harness success stories for Marketing & Communications. May identify potential sponsors, funders, etc. for Development.

Member Relations

Leader:

Naomi Yoshizawa, Director, Global Member Relations

Responsibilities:

Membership engagement and retention.

Contribution to Mission:

Helps engage membership in Working Groups and other groups to develop standards. Ensures income to support core work through membership retention.

Chapters

Leader:

An Qi (Angel) Li, Director, Chapters

Responsibilities:

Developing, evolving, and executing our Chapters Strategy.

Contribution to Mission:

Works with local leadership around the world to extend our reach into the development community and to gather input on potential interest to expand membership and participation.

Development & Programming

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Leader:

Sylvia Cadena, Chief Development Officer

Responsibilities:

This team covers two key areas of responsibility: development and programming. Development spearheads our strategic initiatives to secure the necessary resources to fuel our long term success. This includes cultivating relationships with donors, foundations, and corporate partners. The Programming function involves developing and implementing our programming work (outside of the core technical standards program) to deliver on our mission and vision, and where possible to drive funding. This includes managing against funded budgets and ensuring we are fulfilling our commitment to funders.

Contribution to Mission:

Development drives funding to enable and expand our capability to deliver on our mission; can capture impacts for further marketing and communication. Programming directly contributes to our mission by design.

Financial Operations

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Leadership:

  • Ken Troshinsky, CFO
  • Ralph Swick, COO

Responsibilities:

Financial Operations (FinOps) covers the combined work to drive our financial operations, including membership invoicing management and other member ops functions.

Contribution to Mission:

Oversees efficient and effective management of financial resources to ensure long term viability of our organization.

IT/Systems Operations

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Leader:

Vivien Lacourba, Director, Systems

Responsibilities:

This team has the dual function of developing, acquiring, and supporting the technical infrastructure required to enable and operate the work of our consortium, and for providing internal technical support and infrastructure for our staff.

Contribution to Mission:

Provides and supports tools and environments that enable participants from around the world to contribute to our technical program.

View the team

Leader:

Christine Gefaell, Director, Legal & Compliance

Responsibilities:

This team ensures that our organization follows all applicable laws and regulations, seeks regulatory approval where necessary, provides internal legal advice and insight, reviews processes, protects the organization’s intellectual property and trademarks, keeps management apprised of new laws and regulations that may have an impact, and liaises with outside counsel when further support is needed.

Contribution to Mission:

Provides solid legal and compliance foundation to ensure durability of our organization.

Marketing & Communications

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Leader:

Coralie Mercier, Director, Marketing & Communications

Responsibilities:

Defining and executing our brand and marketing strategies, our internal and external communications, and our media relations.

Contribution to Mission:

Builds momentum to expand technical programming and other programmatic work. Partners with Development to support fundraising campaigns. Communicates the impact of our work to the world.

Project & Process

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Leader:

François Daoust

Responsibilities:

Project management, process execution, and chairs relationships and development. The members of this team are primarily W3C Staff Contacts. The Technical Strategy team also includes W3C Staff Contacts that serve other functions as well. They are considered to have a dotted line (secondary reporting) relationship with the leader of this team.

Contribution to Mission:

Helps drive forward our key programmatic work - technical standards.

Technical Strategy

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Leader:

Philippe Le Hegaret, VP, Technical Strategy

Responsibilities:

This team is core to our technical standards work, providing expertise and strategy in conjunction with membership to drive our technical work forwards. This includes leadership of our horizontal work and our industry focus.

Contribution to Mission:

Working with our membership to create open, interoperable, global standards is central to our mission.

This document was published on 20 August 2025.
Page maintained by Coralie Mercier, Director of W3C Marketing & Communications