Ben Crawford

Chief Executive Officer of centralNIC

As CEO of domain name industry innovator CentralNic, Ben Crawford enables companies, entrepreneurs, nonprofits and city governments to own and control the most valuable real estate on the Internet: top-level domains. As founder of dotBrand Solutions, CentralNic’s branch designed specifically for new gTLDs, Crawford is pioneering a new era of Internet domains.

Now leading a disruptive innovation in the way we use the Internet, Crawford previously played an integral role in the earlier phases of online adoption, particularly in the sectors of sports, gambling and art. In 1996, he negotiated the deal to create content for Microsoft’s then-new MSN; from 1998-2000, he was the executive producer of IBM’s official site for the Sydney Olympic Games, drawing in 11.3 billion hits in two weeks to set a record for the highest website traffic of the twentieth century; subsequently, Crawford went on to manage business and marketing development for SBG Companies, Louise Blouin Media and MutualArt.com, before being named CEO at CentralNic in 2009.