Doug Zuckerman recently finished serving as the 19th President of the IEEE Communications Society, a global professional organization with over 42,000 members in 200 chapters worldwide. He previously held all four Vice President and other officer positions on the Society’s Board of Governors. At present, he chairs Com-Soc’s IEEE/ComSoc Coordination Committee, and is active at the IEEE level on the TAB Management Committee, TAB Society Review Committee, and the MGAB Member Engagement and Life Cycle Committee, as well as being TAB Alternatve for the ComSoc President. He received his B.S., M.S., and Eng.Sc.D degrees from Columbia University and is an IEEE Fellow. His over 40 years’ experience, mainly at Bell Laboratories and Telcordia Technologies, USA, span the operations, management, and engineering of emerging networks and services. His work set the basis for early telecommunications management network standards. Though semi-retired, he is still active in standards as Telcordia’s representative to the Optical Internetworking Forum. Much of his professional life has been dedicated to IEEE activities. His service resulted in the following honors: the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, the Communications Society McLellan Award for meritorious service, its Conference Achievement Award, and the Salah Aidarous Memorial Award.

For nearly 25 years, Doug’s innovative, energetic leadership across the Communications Society (42,000 members, US$17M budget) and IEEE has been responsive to member interests, worldwide. He completed his term as Communications Society President in 2009. He has served on IEEE’s Technical Activities Board, and the TAB/PSPB Products and Services Committee. He is currently on the TAB Management Committee, TAB Society Review Committee, TAB Liaison with the Member and Geographical Activities Board’s Member Engagement and Life Cycle Committee, and on the cross-Society IEEE Committee on Earth Observation.

As ComSoc President, he established a realistic COMSOC 2.0 strategic vision [see References 1 and 2] and worked with ComSoc leadership to:

• Introduce on–line communities,
• Achieve greater global chapter and sister society teaming,
• Expand the Society’s lecture program,
• Reduce the submission to publication time of ComSoc journals,
• Strengthen ComSoc’s role in standards,
• Offer viable educational programs and industry-valued certification for career development,
• Engage more recent graduates and women in Society activities, and
• Revise its governance to better align the Society’s leadership with its global demographics.

In addition, he contributed to important IEEE initiatives in areas that benefited the members, our profession and humanity, including e-health, humanitarian technology, global earth observation, and smart grid.

1. “COMSOC 2.0 – Member Driven,” President’s Page, IEEE Communications Magazine, pp. 6 & 8, January 2008.
2. “The ComSoc Presidency–Farewell Message, ”President’s Page, IEEE Communications Magazine, pp. 6–7, December 2009.