Re: Welcome Grace Rachmany as DIF ED!

On Wed, Dec 3, 2025 at 10:23 AM Kim Hamilton Duffy
<kim@identity.foundation> wrote:
> I'm incredibly excited to announce Grace Rachmany as the new ED of DIF! Many of you are probably familiar with her and her work, and we are incredibly excited about Grace taking the reins. She will be a fantastic steward and leader of DIF.
>
> Read our announcement here: https://blog.identity.foundation/welcome-grace-rachmany/

First, thank you Kim for your many years of leadership and service to
the community. First to the W3C Credentials Community Group, helping
to form and shape the vibrant community that we have today... those
early days weren't easy and you handled the challenge with the deep
commitment and care that was required back then (and continues to be
needed now). Then,  for your work over the past several years to
further align DIF with SSI and some of the principles that many of us
still believe in and are actively fighting for. That journey as well
has not been without its challenges and the world is better off for
your leadership and efforts at DIF.

I'm glad to hear that you'll still be engaged in the community as you
move on to the next stage of your journey, whatever that might be.

Grace, welcome to the community! :)

I believe I met you at RWOT many years ago, albeit very briefly and
remember being impressed with your commitment to doing what is right
for individuals when it comes to their representation in an
increasingly digital world. I read your blog post with great interest.
One of the things I worry about is how difficult it is to find leaders
like Kim (and others that have taken leadership roles both at CCG and
DIF), whose values are aligned with many of the SSI principles. It
sounds like DIF has found that in you.

More recently, I've been dismayed (as have others in this community)
about how governments are adopting and deploying some of the
technologies and concepts we've worked so hard on over the years. The
direction the EU has taken with "government wallets" is one example of
this corruption of vision; centralization creep, the rush to deploy
privacy-harming technologies as a consequence of badly thought through
regulation, backroom dealing in closed meetings, and the rejection of
many SSI principles, are an example of the sorts of concerns some of
us in the community have.

If there is one thing that differentiates DIF and the CCG from some of
these other initiatives, it's the focus on empowering individuals and
not making the individual a result of a governmental process.

That is not to say that the technologies we build here are
anti-government, quite the opposite, they can be used in ways that
empower both individuals and governments... but we've seen what's
happened over the past several years with digital credentials and not
all of these initiatives are in the best interest of the individual.
"Is this primarily serving the needs of a government, or a person
living within that government?"... "Do you  truly have the freedom to
opt-out without being coerced?"... "Is there true market
competition?"... "Do you really have a choice of digital wallet?"...
"Are you beholden to a specific software vendor?"... these are the
questions that have uncomfortable answers today.

I look forward to hearing more about your vision for DIF, and this
community, over the coming months. Know that many of us support the
same things you believe in. The hardest part of all of this is
continuing to work toward a vision that empowers individuals in a
meaningful way, that does not rely on centralization and coercion to
do so, and that will positively impact the millions of people that use
these technologies today, and the hundreds of millions of people these
technologies will impact in the future.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
https://www.digitalbazaar.com/

Received on Thursday, 4 December 2025 13:57:18 UTC