Unicode® Executive Officers and Staff

Tim has over 19 years of experience in the globalization industry, working in an internationalization capacity for companies like Apple, Vivendi Universal, and most recently Netflix. He has built and lead the internationalization team at Netflix for over 6 years, taking the Netflix product from a US only service to a truly global product available in 190 countries and 27 languages. Much of his work at Netflix has revolved around innovation to support globalization at scale. Tim has a software engineering background, holding a degree in Computer Science.

Toral Cowieson joined Unicode in 2021. More recently, she was the head of strategy and impact measurement at the Internet Society. She also held the leadership and learning portfolio, where her team set the vision and scaled online training and fellowship programs to reach NextGen leaders across 100 countries. Many of these technology and policy professionals are now contributing to the design, standards development, and governance of the core Internet infrastructure around the world.

Toral’s prior experience includes leadership roles as a board advisor and across non-profits and corporations, including Thomson Reuters.

Dr. Mark Davis co-founded the Unicode project. He was the president of the Unicode Consortium from its incorporation in 1991 until the end of 2022, and has presided over the board of directors since incorporation. Having held positions at IBM and Apple, Mark joined Google in 2006 where he has been working on software internationalization focusing on effective and secure use of Unicode (especially in the index and search pipeline), the software internationalization libraries (including ICU), and stable international identifiers.

With a robust background in community engagement, training, and marketing, Annie’s expertise includes program and volunteer management, developing impactful content across various platforms, and driving outreach and marketing campaigns that resonate with diverse audiences.

Skilled in both virtual and in-person event planning, she has led numerous training sessions and awareness events. She also brings a strong foundation in grant writing, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) work, and overseeing complex projects. Notably, Annie spearheaded the launch of NH’s first Family Justice Center (FJC), aligning over 30 partner nonprofits and government entities to provide comprehensive services for survivors of abuse under one roof.

Annie is excited to join this “small but mighty” team to further Unicode’s mission of bridging global communication. In her spare time, she enjoys hanging with her family 🧑‍🤸(and her cats😺), gardening🌸, baking🎂, and practicing Swedish on Duo Lingo!

Anne is an experienced legal executive with 30 years in private practice and in-house legal roles. From 2013-2019 she served as vice president for global intellectual property for Swarovski, a global fashion jewelry brand based in central Europe. Before that she held various positions over a decade in the Intel legal department including vice president for global public policy, vice president for global sales & marketing legal affairs, and director of trademarks & brands. Early in her career she was an associate at Fenwick & West and director of trademarks at Sun Microsystems. Since retiring from Swarovski, Anne has been a consultant and has served as a World Intellectual Property Organization domain name panelist under the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy of ICANN.

Anne has long been a leader in the global IP bar. She served on the Board of Directors of the International Trademark Association for nearly a decade and served as the Association’s president in 2005. From 2006 to 2008 she served as chair of the Coalition for Intellectual Property Rights. She was one of the drafters of the U.S. Trademark Dilution Revision Act of 2006.

Anne has also long been a supporter of the Unicode Consortium and its work, providing pro bono IP counsel since the mid ‘90s. She is also a proud Gold Sponsor of the Comma (U+002C) and the Trademark Symbol (U+2122).

Gregg has been in the IT industry for almost 30 years. In that time, he has worked in non-profit, commercial and government sectors in consulting and in-house positions helping organizations streamline their environments and processes. He holds an MS in Information Systems from American University. In his spare time, Gregg plays in a band that plays in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and DC.

Teresa Marshall is Vice President, Globalization at Salesforce, where she is responsible for product globalization and localization. Over the last 20 years, she has held leadership positions in a number Silicon Valley companies, including at Google. Teresa previously served as an adjunct member of the faculty at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS) and on the Board of Directors of Women in Localization.

Teresa holds an MA in Translation & Interpretation from Middlebury Institute. An active member of the localization community, she has been the organizer and cohost of the annual Localization Unconference in Silicon Valley since 2009.

Rick McGowan was appointed Technical Director in July 1992, then Vice President in 1998. He became Technical Vice President in 2011, then VP/IT in 2021. In 2001, he joined Unicode as a senior software engineer and a member of staff. Prior to that Rick was employed by AT&T Unix Pacific, NeXT Software, Inc. and Apple Computer, Inc. Rick has long been an active participant in the Unicode Technical Committee, and participated in the working group prior to the formation of the Consortium.

Michelle was first introduced to Unicode in the early 2000s while working at Adobe as a member of the InDesign QA team. She later spent 8 years as a Program Manager in the Typography group at Microsoft where she managed font projects for a wide range of writing scripts. She represented Microsoft at Opentype, ISO and Unicode standards meetings. Most recently, she worked at Type Network, managing projects and helping clients with font licensing. She holds an MS and BS from Rochester Institute of Technology. She joined the Unicode team in 2024.