Mr Ponder is Head of the ITU Office for Europe at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) (Geneva, Switzerland). Within the last years Mr. Ponder has been carrying out numerous projects, activities and initiatives at national, regional and international levels. He has been taking lead role in many international conferences and summits dealing with fostering ICT innovation and development of ICT ecosystem, information society, and advancements of digital economy worldwide, while setting strategies and ensuring their timely implementation. Along the professional career Mr. Ponder held official positions in the public sector and was a contributor to the legislative projects having impact on the public policy. Since 2014 Mr. Ponder has been working for ITU, in Market, Economics and Finance Unit (MEF/ITU), Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU/ITU), Project and Initiatives Department (PRI/ITU). From year 2008 upon his former duties he has acted as Europe Officer (EUR/ITU) as well as Project Manager for European Centres of Excellence Network (CoE-EUR). In August 2008 he was appointed as Coordinator for Europe. After successful recreation of the coordination for the region in 2009 he moved to the General Secretariat becoming Strategy and Policy Coordinator and one year later Senior Strategy and Policy Advisor with the objective to lead the ITU activities on World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS; United Nation Process on ICTs) and its 10 year review, amongst the others successfully establishing prime platforms, i.e. WSIS Forum, WSIS Prizes, WSIS Stocktaking, and organizing WSIS+10 High Level Event (2014) that resulted in negotiated texts. In parallel, since 2011 he has been working as Coordinator for Europe strengthening coordination and implementation mechanism. In 2017 he became the Head of ITU Office for Europe, directing actions, projects, initiatives, experts groups targeting 45 countries and representing ITU in Europe.
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