Founded in 2004 and headquartered in San Francisco, Calif., the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) is where the messaging industry comes together to work against spam, viruses, denial-of-service attacks and other online exploitation.  MAAWG represents almost one billion mailboxes from some of the largest network operators worldwide.  It is the only organization addressing messaging abuse holistically by systematically engaging all aspects of the problem, including technology, industry collaboration and public policy.

MAAWG leverages the depth and experience of its global membership to tackle abuse on existing networks and new emerging services.  It is an open forum driven by market needs and supported by major network operators and messaging providers. 

MAAWG Leadership

Jerry Upton, MAAWG Executive Director
Jerry Upton has served as MAAWG Executive Director for five years.  Previously, in his more than twenty years experience at Motorola, he held executive positions in standards, software and mobile phone products, alliance management and business development.  His most recent position at Motorola was Vice President of Global Standards for the Personal Communications Sector.  Mr. Upton was the founding Chairman of the Open Mobile Alliance, the pre-eminent mobile applications standardization forum, and he also currently serves as the Chair of OMA TIA TR47 Engineering Committee.

Michael O’Reirdan, MAAWG Chairman
Michael O’Reirdan is serving his second term as Chairman of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG), the industry’s largest global trade association that works against messaging spam, viruses, denial-of-service attacks and other online exploitation.  He also leads the organization’s Internet Service Providers Closed Colloquium, a MAAWG committee of international network operators.  Professionally, Mr. O’Reirdan is a Distinguished Engineer at a major ISP in North America with over 18 years of experience in the ISP field and with public facing messaging platforms.  He has served on executive advisory boards for several major computer vendors and is active in other industry organizations.

Alex Bobotek, MAAWG Co-Vice Chairman
Alex Bobotek is Co-Vice Chairman of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) and also leads the organization’s wireless special interest group (the MAAWG WSIG) that is specifically focused on fighting abuse of mobile services.  Professionally, Mr. Bobotek is a Principal Architect at AT&T, where he is responsible for the company’s mobile messaging anti-abuse architecture and strategy.  He has over 16 years experience in mobile data services and has participated in and chaired the development of industry-wide mobile data standards as part of activities in other industry organizations.

Chris Roosenraad, MAAWG Co-Vice Chairman
Chris Roosenraad is Principal Engineer at a major ISP in North America with over 12 years of ISP experience, having worked for carriers in the U.S., Europe and Asia.  He is serving his second term as a Co-Vice Chairman of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) and is also a Co-Chair of the MAAWG Program Committee, which is responsible for organizing the three MAAWG meetings each year.  Previously, he served as Chair of the MAAWG Technical Committee.  Mr. Roosenraad has been involved in various computer vendor advisory boards and is active in other industry organizations.

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