Ecma International, a leading industry standards developing organization dedicated to the open standardization of information and communication systems, announced today that Samina Husain has been appointed to secretary general. Starting July 1 Husain will build on Ecma’s current leadership in areas such as programming languages, Internationalization API, acoustics, and storage media. She is responsible for the overall management and representation of the organization to further progress its efficient operations, accelerate standardization efforts, and strengthen Ecma’s role as a key player within the international standardization systems for the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Consumer Electronics (CE) industries.
“As the ICT and CE industries see continued growth in new technologies, standardization is critical to reducing complexity, simplifying integration, and reducing the cost of deployment,” said Dr. Jochen Friedrich, president of Ecma International. “The future of Ecma’s standards development is bright with Samina joining our organization. Samina’s broad experience and strategic insights from working in the industry, complemented by market analysis, business strategy, and partner alliance expertise, will help to support the standardization needs of stakeholders and elevate our global visibility, outreach, and partnerships.”
For more than 25 years, Husain has fostered business and relationship development throughout the consumer electronics, broadcast, satellite, and telecom industries. Prior to joining Ecma, Husain was the managing director of a robotic kitchen innovator and dynamic startup. Husain also held marketing, business development, and engineering roles at leading companies such as Siemens, Nortel Networks, SES Satellites, and more. She is currently the vice president of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society and an executive committee member of the IEEE Women in Engineering. Husain will bring her expertise in building trusted relationships, nurturing collaboration, and implementing go-to-market strategies to Ecma.
“Ecma is a strong organization that has been around since 1961, bringing together industry and technology experts from around the world to develop standards in a contribution-driven, consensus-based approach,” said Husain. “I’m excited to take on this position and to help Ecma pioneer new technical standards. There are many different spaces that Ecma offers value, including the open source community, and I look forward to leveraging those opportunities and creating a foundation for future growth.”
Ecma International is a global standards development organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, dedicated to the standardization of information and communication systems. Ecma has been a pioneer in providing a framework for the collaboration of standardization and open source. The work is driven by Ecma members to address market requirements, providing a healthy competitive environment where competition is based on differentiation of products and services, and where vendors and users can rely on interoperability of technical solutions. Areas of work include development and publication of Standards and Technical Reports for ICT and CE, with a broad scope of standardization topics including hardware, software, communications, consumer electronics, IoT, programming languages, media storage and environmental subjects.
Ecma’s pragmatic, flexible, member-driven model is effective at enabling technical committees to form and iterate rapidly on internationally recognized open standards.
More information about Ecma International can be found at www.ecma-international.org.
