Digital privacy guru. Marketing professor. Security expert. Technologist. David H. Holtzman, an Internet pioneer who helped oversee the Internet's wild growth from its infancy in the middle-1990s, wears many hats: thinker, activist and writer.

During the turbulent late ‘90s during the Dot Com boom, Holtzman ran the most critical network in the world—the domain name system. As Chief Technology Officer of Network Solutions and the manager of the Internet's master root server, or the dot, Holtzman oversaw the growth of the commercial Internet from 500,000 to over 20,000,000 domain names.

Holtzman is one of the people who truly understands both the technology implications of the global, pervasive networks, and its effects on culture and society in the Age of the Network. He explains in a visionary voice how technological advances have real-world implications for the way we live.

Holtzman, 49, has led initiatives that have radically changed the way people interact with technology. A former cryptographic analyst, Russian linguist and submariner with the U.S. Naval Security Group, Holtzman also worked at the Defense Special Missile and Astronautics Center as an intelligence analyst, focusing chiefly on the Soviet Manned Space program.

As Chief Scientist at IBM's Internet Information Technology group, Holtzman managed the development of IBM's information product and service offering to encrypt and sell digitized content across the Internet called cryptolopes. He has also served as a senior analyst for Booz-Allen & Hamilton for several years, where he ran technology-driven restructuring initiatives for Wall Street firms and large financial institutions. He designed and built a networked, heterogeneous data base and text retrieval system called Minerva, which was used by NATO and several trade associations before being sold to IBM in 1994.

Mr. Holtzman was CEO and Chairman of Opion, a venture-backed start-up company he founded in 2000 and sold in 2001. While there, he developed and patented innovative marketing intelligence technology. He has consulted on marketing strategy for several large corporations, including Amazon.com, and served as a security advisor to General Wesley Clark's presidential campaign. He is President of GlobalPOV, a firm he founded to explore significant tech issues in more detail. He has served on several boards of privately held companies in the US, Canada and Singapore as well as non-profit organizations. He has been an advisor to over a dozen high tech companies in DC, Silicon Valley, Austin, Canada and New York. He has taught courses as an adjunct associate MBA professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and entrepreneurship via a cutting edge ‘Lecture On Demand’ technique for the University of Pittsburgh using distance learning software and podcast lectures.

He has been interviewed by major news media in the last few years, including: CNN Headline News, Bloomberg Television, BBC news, Scientific American, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Associated Press, and Business Week. Holtzman wrote a monthly ethics and privacy column called "Flashpoint" for CSO (Chief Security Officer) Magazine, and his essays have been published in Business Week, Wired magazine, CNET, and Zdnet. Presently, Holtzman publishes daily comments on topics such as Privacy, Intellectual Property, Business, and Pop Culture on his blog: www.globalpov.com. His book, Privacy Lost, that contends that privacy, as we understand it, has been changed forever because of technology, will be published in fall 2006 by Wiley.

He has designed and built numerous information-based software systems and is the author of several patents including Verisign’s Domain Name Registry and pseudonymous roaming. Holtzman holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Maryland and a BA in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as being an honors graduate in Russian from the Defense Language Institute.

Holtzman is the father of five children, who he raised as a single parent. When not at home in Herndon, Virginia, Mr. Holtzman spends part of the year in Prince Edward Island, a maritime Province of Canada, where he advises local companies on technology issues. Separately, he is also an advisor to several local entrepreneurs and early stage companies. He is on the Board of Forum-21, as well as the Herndon Foundation for the Cultural Arts.

For more information, please consult www.davidholtzman.com.