Dear colleagues, We both are delighted and honoured to have been chosen as the new RIPE Chair and Vice-Chair. We are eager to serve the RIPE Community and ready to listen to what the Community has to tell us. We want to start by acknowledging the effort and engagement of all who have worked to bring about this outcome. Many thanks to the RIPE NomCom and to the RIPE NCC Executive Board for carrying out this selection process for the first time in the history of the RIPE community. Many thanks to the community and to everyone who provided feedback. We feel honoured by the confidence you put in us and accept the challenge. We will do our best to meet your expectations. And many thanks to Hans Petter Holen who guided the community since RIPE 68 when he had the RIPE Chair role handed over to him by Rob Blokzijl who chaired the RIPE community since RIPE 1 in 1989. It will be hard to step into the shoes of those two chairs. Obviously we cannot do this without all of you and we will be seeking your input and guidance. We salute and draw inspiration from the commitment to service shown by Filiz Yilmaz and Nigel Titley in standing as nominees for the positions to which we have now been chosen. We are currently in discussion with Hans Petter about the transition to the new RIPE Chair team, and expect that the formal handover date will be during August. In the meantime, we shall be reading ourselves into our new rôles. We have been carefully following the discussion about the relationship between the RIPE NCC and RIPE and the rôle which RIPE NCC staff can and should play within the RIPE community; one of our early priorities will be to start a review of these relationships. We expect to have more to say about our other plans shortly. We are looking forward to working with all of you. Kind regards, Mirjam Kühne and Niall O’Reilly