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Steering Committee Election 2025: Candidate Statements

Decentralized Identity Foundation
· 13 min read
Steering Committee Election 2025: Candidate Statements

Sam Curren (Indicio, US)


Interest and qualifications

Sam Curren has been involved with the DIF since the organization's very origins. With relevant work both in and out of the digital identity space, Sam has been involved in a number of efforts, including DIDComm and its transition from the HL Aries WG into the DIF and subsequent v2 release of the spec. Sam has an MS in Computer Science.

Answers to Questions

  1. What do you think DIF's biggest challenge are in the next 4 quarters, and how can the organization best help its members rise to that challenge?

Choosing an org path and main goals (either within or without LF) is a main focus. Additional challenges involve balancing promotion of newer technologies while making strong statements about technology and its effects. This requires the balance of a mostly-unopinionated org open to development of new technologies and approaches, while making strong statements and issuing strong guidance on particular issues. This has been a past benefit, but is difficult to navigate. 

  1. If DIF were to integrate more closely to the rest of the Linux Foundation and assume a more traditional LF membership and staffing structure, what should DIF focus on?

I believe we as an org will need to choose what items will flourish under a fully-LF model, and focus on those items. We should seek to become the arm of the LF (or perhaps LFDT) focused on specific topics well aligned with our larger org(s). This will ease the pain of not being able to support a full ED for DIF the way we have in the past.

  1. If DIF left the Linux Foundation and bootstrapped as a completely independent organization, what should be its focus for the next 4 quarters, to complement new freedoms and an altered sustainability model?

Our new freedoms will require willing donors, and our advocacy will need to align with our best sources of income. Staying close to our sponsoring orgs will need to become a high priority. This move can allow us to make very strong statements, but will also need to be carefully navigated to maintain our ability to conduct pre-standards-body efforts.

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Jan Christoph Ebersbach (Identinet, Germany)

1. What do you think DIF's biggest challenge are in the next 4 quarters, and how can the organization best help its members rise to that challenge?

I believe DIF's biggest challenge over the next four quarters centers on accelerating real-world adoption of Decentralized Identity. While digital identity has emerged as a game changer—particularly with governments around the world recognizing its transformative potential—and decentralized approaches offer significant advantages over traditional digital identity schemes, we face a critical gap between our technical ideas and practical implementations. Real-world adoption is the cornerstone of success for both DIF and its members, and bridging this gap must be our primary focus.

DIF currently supports adoption through three key channels: developing specifications, providing forums for members to exchange ideas and collaborate through working groups and labs, and maintaining an active presence in conversations with relevant third-party entities. I believe the organization should continue to excel in all three areas. Specifically, I would advocate for greater standardization of our specifications accompanied by reference implementations that make them truly usable for practitioners. By delivering high quality tools alongside our technical standards, we can remove friction from the adoption process and demonstrate the practical value of decentralized identity solutions to organizations considering implementation. This also entails archiving unmaintained and incomplete works and ensuring proper guidance for contributions to strengthen our public image and attract new members.

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Rouven Heck (Independent)


Interest and qualifications

My background is in computer science and banking, I spent eight years at ConsenSys, where I founded uPort and later served as the identity lead. I have been a DIF board member since its inception (as one of its founders) and serving as executive director for several years.
Currently, I work as an independent advisor and board member for a KYC identity-related project while actively conducting research and experiments in AI.
1b) Statement: 
As independent advisor, I currently play a less active role in the identity ecosystem. My main contribution to the Steering Committee and future Executive Director will be extensive background in DIF & the collaboration with Linux Foundation and other organizations. 

Questions: 

What do you think DIF's biggest challenge are in the next 4 quarters, and how can the organization best help its members rise to that challenge?

DIF holds immense potential, but with the industry evolving and key players shifting their focus or exiting, it’s crucial for DIF to solidify its role within the broader ecosystem to maintain its influence. Identity remains highly relevant across many facets of the digital world—empowering individuals, combating fake content, and more—especially as the web becomes increasingly agent-driven.
To achieve this, it’s essential to pinpoint the industry's major pain points where decentralized identity concepts and technologies can offer superior solutions. Additionally, we must identify partners and members who share this mission, foster cross-industry collaboration, and position DIF as the central hub for these efforts.

If DIF were to integrate more closely to the rest of the Linux Foundation and assume a more traditional LF membership and staffing structure, what should DIF focus on?

The key question is: how will the non-commercial ideals and mission of the DIF endure within a market-driven organization? Large corporations heavily influence the Linux Foundation, and their interests often diverge from the DIF's mission. Maintaining a strong and independent voice will be the greatest challenge, especially if management prioritizes the demands of their largest financial contributors. Ideally, the DIF can sustain its independent funding and secure donations or contributions from non-profit organizations that align with its vision. 

If DIF left the Linux Foundation and bootstrapped as a completely independent organization, what should be its focus for the next 4 quarters, to complement new freedoms and an altered sustainability model?

In addition to membership fees, seek independent funding from mission-aligned non-profits. As an independent organization, DIF gains greater flexibility; however, its governance and leadership must ensure that DIF continues to operate effectively and strategically within the industry, as it may risk losing some credibility due to its association with the Linux Foundation 

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Matthew McKinney (ArcBlock, US)


1. What is DIF’s biggest challenge in the next 4 quarters, and how can the organization best help its members rise to that challenge?

Our biggest challenge is converting industry awareness into adoption. While our specs are strong, I believe that potential adopters still face too much friction, and the business value isn't always clear.

To solve this, I will drive a single, shared plan with the Steering Committee and working group chairs focused on three things:

  • Treat our standards like products. For each priority spec, we will ship an "adoption kit" containing a live sandbox, developer libraries, and clear tutorials. Our goal is to make it possible for a developer to issue their first credential in a day and complete a verifiable action within a week.
  • Listen to our members and act. We'll run at least quarterly surveys and monthly office hours to identify the top blockers to adoption. We will then reserve roadmap space to fix those issues and publicly report on our progress.
  • Prove the business value. We will amplify member success stories through case studies that focus on quantifiable ROI: time saved, fraud reduced, and compliance simplified. We will adopt vibe marketing playbooks to ensure our stories are seen in the right locations at the right times. Demonstrating ROI in this investment is core to this. 

2. If DIF were to integrate more closely with the Linux Foundation, what should DIF focus on?

Our focus should be to leverage the LF's scale while protecting our speed and flexibility. In collaboration with the Steering Committee and LF counterparts, we would:

  • Expand our go-to-market reach. We would plug into LF’s marketing, events, and developer relations programs. This would put our members and their solutions in front of a global audience of enterprise buyers and developers, dramatically increasing top-of-funnel awareness. I would also engage our members to identify other members who can help facilitate these activities.
  • Integrate with the enterprise stack. We would partner with other major LF projects in security, cloud, and AI. The goal is to position DIF as the default, built-in identity layer for C-suite priorities like Zero Trust architecture and supply-chain integrity.
  • Deliver clear business solutions. We would co-publish reference architectures and live demos that map our technology directly to the challenges faced by CISOs and CTOs, making it easier for them to adopt our work. Success wouldn't be measured by page views, but by enterprise trials, certified implementations, and real-world deployments.

3. If DIF operated as a fully independent organization, what should be its focus for the next 4 quarters?

As an independent organization, we would need to be relentlessly member-centric and commercially sustainable. This requires a clear, disciplined plan co-owned by the Steering Committee and working group leads.

  • Focus exclusively on member value. We would use surveys and direct feedback to validate the top 2-3 "jobs-to-be-done" for our members and dedicate our resources to solving them. We would build only what our members need to succeed in production. More value will drive more "skin in the game" participation and membership.
  • Let our products drive our growth. Our friction free adoption kits would become our primary marketing tool. We would supplement this with published ROI stories and calculators that members can take directly to their budget owners.
  • Create sustainable revenue streams. We would introduce new value-add programs that also ensure our long-term health, such as paid conformance and certification, a public directory for verified implementers and auditors, and premium support tiers. We must be lean, transparent, and completely aligned with delivering measurable outcomes for the organizations that fund our mission.

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Doug Rice (Hospitality Network, US)


Interest and qualifications

I have been an active participant and supporter of decentralized identity and DIF since the formation of the Hospitality and Travel SIG in 2020 or 2021. For more than two years I have led twice-weekly meetings of the self-attested hospitality travel profile effort, which evolved in spring 2025 to become the Hospitality & Travel Working Group. I was the initial chair of that group and now serve as one of the two co-chairs.

I spent most of my career in senior roles in the hospitality and travel industry. Identity is a critical issue for hospitality and travel and will become more so in the AI era, and I have been a vocal supporter of DIF’s role in addressing the issue. In addition, I bring significant nonprofit management experience, having founded, bootstrapped, and for 13 years led (initially as ED, then as CEO) a highly successful trade association in the hospitality tech space (4500 members globally, $2.5 million budget, 10 staff when I retired in 2015). In that role I got to know most of the senior executives in the industry around the world (hotel and tech vendor), and still have a strong network that I can and do tap into to publicize DIF’s efforts.

I currently sit on several boards and advisory boards for vendors within the hotel tech industry, many of which can benefit (at least in the longer term) from DIF’s and other SSI efforts. I have written extensively on a wide range of topics, with a style designed to explain technical solutions to a business or semi-technical audience, and have spoken hundreds of times at industry events on a wide variety of topics (including self-sovereign identity).

While I have technical pedigrees from the distant past and still understand most relevant technical concepts, I have been a business executive for the past 30 years and will not pretend to have current technical skills. But having spent my professional career at the intersection of tech-speak and business-speak, I am an exceptionally competent translator between the two languages, and have had continued success in explaining complex technical concepts to business leaders so they can evaluate them thoughtfully and meaningfully.

Specific questions

1. What do you think DIF's biggest challenges are in the next 4 quarters, and how can the organization best help its members rise to that challenge?

I don’t have exposure to everything DIF does so I’m sure my list is not complete or properly prioritized, but based on what I have seen, I would say:

  • Finding more (and more effective) ways to communicate the value proposition of our work, and the business opportunities it creates, in ways that are clearer to nontechnical or semitechnical business audiences.
  • Finding ways to increase engagement, membership revenue, and other sources of revenue.
  • Effectively addressing the perpetual open-source standards issue of convincing users to pay for something that they can get for free.
  • Confirming or evolving the current legal and organizational structure to ensure alignment with longer-term objectives. This may require ensuring that the objectives themselves align appropriately with the needs of members; even if they were fully aligned in the past, this needs to be continually evaluated.

2. If DIF were to integrate more closely to the rest of the Linux Foundation and assume a more traditional LF membership and staffing structure, what should DIF focus on?

I can’t comment on this directly as I have had very limited exposure to the LF membership and staffing structure. In concept, I believe that nonprofit organizations need to carefully consider each of their operating functions and how best to achieve it, consistent with their mission. If key functions (marketing/communications, human resources, operations, legal, finance/accounting, membership, etc.) can be done more effectively in an umbrella operation, they should be. If on the other hand nuances of the organization’s objectives, membership, community, culture, industry structure, technology needs, or other issues mean that some functions are better run independently, then that choice should prevail.

There is no single answer; when I ran a nonprofit we were always evaluating the options even though we started as, and remained, independent throughout my tenure as CEO. But that was based on our particular mission, industry structure, and level of maturity. Each organization is different and changes over time.

3. If DIF left the Linux Foundation and bootstrapped as a completely independent organization, what should be its focus for the next 4 quarters, to complement new freedoms and an altered sustainability model?

The first focus has to be on the sustainability of the financial model: initial funding (or sources thereof) and ongoing operations. Nothing succeeds if you run out of money. Having bootstrapped an organization from $0 revenue and grown it to $2.5 million, I understand this challenge intimately.

The secondary focus needs to be to define DIF’s position within the world of standards organizations. What are the sectors where DIF can win, where should we partner with others that are better positioned, what should we abandon? With limited volunteer resources, it’s critical to ensure that they are directed toward outcomes with the highest probability of success and adoption – and commercial success for contributors.

Within this, the ongoing relationship with LF matters. Linux and W3C are considered the gold standard for open-source ecosystems, and the migration of DIF efforts into W3C standards can amplify the visibility, credibility, and adoption of our efforts. There may be reasons for a divorce, but it needs to be amicable if DIF wants to continue to leverage LF’s credibility to spur adoption of its work.

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Markus Sabadello (DanubeTech, Austria)

I think the biggest challenge for the future has to do with the question that I usually also asked during the recent series of interviews with Executive Director candidates. This question is how DIF can find the right balance between maintaining and growing its membership, and keeping its traditional open, un-opinionated, grassroots culture. The first objective may require more direct answers and more concrete technological choices to match the real-life needs of governments and corporations, while the second objective may sometimes stand in the way of that. This balance could of course be changed at some point, if we as DIF decide this together. In other words, there shouldn't be any dogmatic, religious rules about DIF's orientation. DIF members are very diverse when it comes to their motivations why they are participating, this needs to be taken into account. In terms of technical work, since everybody is talking about AI now, we should clearly make sure that we are a well-known actor when it comes to decentralized identity topics within the AI field. But I think we already have strong members and contributors in this field.

If DIF were to integrate more closely with the rest of the Linux Foundation, I think that while there will be changes in operational, financial, etc. aspects, DIF wouldn't necessarily have to change much content-wise. It might be smart however for DIF to align some of its Working Groups and Work Items more closely with other LF projects such as ToIP, Open Wallet Foundation, to reduce overlap and market confusion. We could potentially propose to move some Work Items from other LF projects into DIF, if we feel they would fit better (e.g. DID method specifications).

If DIF became bootstrapped as a completely independent organization, we would initially be busy for a while with adjusting, migrating, etc. the various infrastructure and processes. But I think such a step would also bring a certain new "freshness" to DIF, raise curiosity, and maybe new attention from actors and communities that we didn't previously expect. Content-wise, I feel like it would give us even more freedom, and a more independent perception. We should then focus on a really good website, cleaned up repositories, documentation, videos, etc., in order to make it easy for newcomers to feel comfortable.

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Eric Scouten (Adobe, US)

Interest and qualifications

I'm excited to stand for election for DIF's Steering Committee. Many of you know me through my role as Identity Standards Architect at Adobe. In this role, I help bridge the gap between content creators and their audiences. It is far too easy in this era to tell false stories about who created content and to use misinformation and disinformation to confuse and mislead.

The work of the content provenance ecosystem aims to provide more transparency about who is creating and distributing digital media, and to make it easier for authentically created content to stand apart from content that intends to mislead. A key part of this ecosystem is the use of individual and organizational identity credentials – tools that allow creators, publishers, and distributors to prove who they are and to establish trustworthy connections with their audiences. By combining provenance metadata with verifiable identity, we can build a stronger foundation for trust across the digital media landscape.

I’ve been honored to help lead this effort as co-chair of the Creator Assertions Working Group (CAWG) and to contribute to real-world adoption by implementing CAWG standards in open-source work sponsored by Adobe.

Earlier this year, CAWG became part of DIF, and the collaboration has already benefitted greatly from the expertise and feedback of the broader DIF membership. This partnership has strengthened CAWG’s work and, I believe, represents the kind of cross-community engagement that makes DIF so valuable.

I am eager to support DIF and to help ensure that DIF continues to be a vibrant and trusted home for innovation in decentralized identity and related ecosystems.

Response to questions

I haven't yet formed a position on whether DIF should align more deeply with the Linux Foundation, go it alone, or maintain status quo. I could make arguments for any of these paths and of course there are many factors that will go into making a well-considered choice. Top of mind for me is thinking through financial viability for DIF and its members – in other words, how do we encourage enough members to sign up for paid memberships to pay our staff and our bills, traded against the need to make participation appealing and feasible for a wide variety of companies, non-profits, and individual members.

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