OpenID Foundation Leadership

Executive Director

Gail Hodges

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Gail Hodges joined the OpenID Foundation as Executive Director in May 2021. She is also the Founder of the Future Identity Council, a global non-profit that seeks to empower citizens with mobile identity credentials that are private, secure, and easy to use.
The council is government-led and partners closely with the private sector to ensure that this “public good” reaches its full potential. Gail previously worked at Apple for 5 years, where she led Business Development for a range of new Identity and Payment services, setting up new ecosystems and business models to achieve scale. She led the government roll out of Core NFC, which allows Apple devices to read chip-based ID cards. She also led Latin American markets for Apple Pay, and developed the platform for domestic payment networks to join Apple Pay. Prior to joining Apple, Gail was SVP and Global Head of Digital Payments for HSBC Holdings based in London, and previously Head of HSBC’s Premier and Advance Card portfolios. Prior to HSBC, Gail ran the UK Centurion and Platform Card Portfolios, and was part of the Strategic Planning group at American Express. Gail holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a B.A. in Public Policy from Princeton University.
Non Executive Director

Don Thibeau

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For ten years Don Thibeau was Executive Director of the OpenID Foundation, where he oversaw the development of key internet identity technologies like OpenID Connect and Financial Grade APIs.

Don Thibeau serves on the Board of the OpenID Foundation, a non-profit, standards development organization committed to international interoperable technical standards. He was OIDF’s Executive Director for 10 years.  As founder of the Open Identity Exchange, he led OIX for 10 years and now serves as its Vice Chair. Open Identity Exchange is a a non profit organization developing scheme rules, trust frameworks and governance for identity systems at scale. Early in his career, Don led business development and strategy at the LexisNexis Group and the Reed Elsevier Venture Fund. As a serial entrepreneur and investor he now advises on venture firms in the internet identity industry. 

Non Executive Director

Michael Jones

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Michael B. Jones is on a quest to build the Internet’s missing identity layer.

He is an editor of the OpenID Connect specifications, IETF OAuth specifications, including JSON Web Token (JWT) and DPoP, the IETF JSON Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE) specifications, FIDO 2.0, and W3C Web Authentication. Michael has been recognized as Distinguished Engineer by OpenID Foundation for creating simple, secure, ubiquitous, interoperable digital identity solutions since 2005. As a long-time member of the OpenID Board of Directors, he architected the award-winning and globally adopted OpenID Certification program. He chairs the IETF COSE working group. Michael’s Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University led to a lifelong career in digital identity, computer security, privacy, and networking. He is passionate about mentoring the next generation of identity leaders. He blogs at https://self-issued.info/ and tweets at @selfissued.

Counsel

Tom Smedinghoff

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Tom Smedinghoff
has been practicing technology law for over four decades, including as a partner in the global law firms of Baker & McKenzie LLP and Locke Lord LLP and now as a consultant. 

He is internationally recognized for his work in developing digital legal policy both in the U.S. and internationally, most notably regarding e-commerce and identity management.  As a member of the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), he helped to negotiate the 2022 UNCITRAL Model Law on the Use and Cross Border Recognition of Identity Management and Trust Services, the 2005 United Nations Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts, and the 2001 UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Signatures. A longstanding leader in the American Bar Association (ABA), Tom founded and chairs its Identity Management Legal Task Force (in the ABA Business Law Section) and previously served as Co-Chair of the ABA Cybersecurity Legal Task Force and Chair of the ABA Science & Technology Law Section. Tom has authored and co-authored numerous books and articles on e-commerce, identity management, privacy, and cybersecurity topics, including serving as editor and lead contributing author of the first book on Internet law titled ONLINE LAW: THE LEGAL GUIDE TO DOING BUSINESS ON THE INTERNET (Addison Wesley, 1996).

Program Manager

Mike Leszcz

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Mike Leszcz is the Program Manager at the OpenID Foundation where he is responsible for managing all projects including the OpenID Certification Program, a pioneering and award winning open standard self-certification program with global adoption.
Mike is also the Program Manager at the Open Identity Exchange where he most recently managed the merger of the OIX global organization with the OIX UK Chapter via an asset transfer transaction to create a new UK-based organization. Prior, Mike held senior business development positions with leading organizations focused on data analytics and business intelligence solutions. Mike has a B.S. from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.
Distinguished Engineer

Mark Haine

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Mark Haine is an engineer and entrepreneur who has focussed his career on building solutions that enable business and mitigate risk in financial services.

Through Considrd.Consulting Ltd. Mark and his team are providing strategic security consultancy to a range of clients. He has also taken on a leadership role in the OpenID Foundation as Co-Chair of the eKYC & Identity Assurance Working Group and co-author of OpenID Connect for Identity Assurance. Mark also contributes to other communities including the W3C and OpenAPI, serves as a board member of the Open Identity Exchange and is board advisor to two technology startups.
Mark was close to developments in Open Banking and has been directly involved in Open Banking UK as senior security architect, member of the standards team, and identity product owner. He has also helped a number of other organisations navigate the complexities of opening up access to their data and services via APIs. Mark holds a B.Eng. from the University of Southampton in Electronic Engineering. Mark’s goal is to help organisations succeed by influencing projects in a ways that improve outcomes for people.

Certification Team

Marcus Almgren

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Marcus Almgren is an engineering manager and software developer at Signicat, one of the major providers of digital identity solutions in Europe.
He is a long-time professional within the domains of electronic identity, digital signature, identity assurance and KYC, with many years of experience working with authentication and authorization protocols.

Domingos Creado

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Domingos Creado is a identity and access management professional with 10 years acting as consultant and advisor roles.
He has more than 20 years on software development industry as software architect on different domains from logistics, telecom, manufacturing, intelligent cities, and financial.

Joseph Heenan

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Joseph Heenan is the CTO at FinTechLabs.io, a growing identity & security startup based at level39 (London).
Joseph is an active member/contributor to many OpenID Foundation working groups, including the FAPI group that defined the security profile used in the UK OpenBanking specifications and a member of the OpenID Foundation Certification Team. He led the team at FintechLabs through the development & successful deployment of the conformance suite for the UK OpenBanking security profile and assisted many of the largest UK (CMA9) banks with achieving compliance to the UK specification, and now has a focus on doing the same with the CIBA decoupled authentication standard. He’s a seasoned software engineer & architect with over 25 years’ experience, who started writing mobile apps before mobile apps existed and went on to co-found a successful mobile software development consultancy based in Glasgow (UK) in 2010. Joseph lives in Glasgow with his wife, they love traveling to Japan and between them, they’ve fostered over 100 cats for the Cats Protection charity.

Edmund Jay

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Edmund Jay is an experienced software developer with over 20 years experience in information security, digital rights management, and standards development.
He has been involved identity and privacy standards for over 10 years and is a contributor to the OpenID Connect, FAPI and dependent specifications. He was an early implementer of OpenID Connect and participated in interoperability tests that were critical for the initial OpenID conformance tests.

Alan Smillie

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Alan Smillie is a software developer at Emobix, a software consultancy in Europe with a focus on mobile. He has more than 30 years experience in many areas ranging from embedded systems to mobile application development.