2011/SOM1/SCSC/CON1/002
Speakers and Moderators List
Submitted by: United States
/ 6th Conference on Good Regulatory PracticeWashington, D.C., United States
1-2 March 2011
Speaker and Moderator Biographies
Demetrios Marantis
Demetrios Marantis serves as Deputy USTR, nominated for this position by President Barack Obama, and confirmed by the Senate on May 6, 2009. He is responsible for U.S. trade negotiations and enforcement in Asia and Africa. He also leads USTR global initiatives on trade and development, labor, and the environment. He recently served as Chief International Trade Counsel (Majority) for the Senate Finance Committee. In this capacity, he advised Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D - MT), as well as members and staff of the Finance Committee and Democratic Caucus, on trade and economic issues.
Mr. Marantis joined the committee in February of 2005 after serving as Issues Director for Sen. John Edwards on the Kerry-Edwards 2004 presidential campaign. Prior to the campaign, Mr. Marantis spent two years in Hanoi as Chief Legal Advisor for the U.S.-Vietnam Trade Council where he provided technical assistance on international trade matters.
Between 1998 and 2002, Mr. Marantis served as Associate General Counsel in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative where he negotiated provisions of international trade agreements - including the U.S.-Singapore and U.S. Chile Free Trade Agreements - and represented the United States in WTO dispute settlement proceedings, including the U.S.-Mexico dispute on telecommunications. Mr. Marantis also worked for five years in the Washington, D.C. and Brussels, Belgium offices of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld.
He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and an A.B. in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University.
Takashi Omori
Dr. Takashi Omori is the Chair of APEC Economic Committee, and a Member of Statistical Commission, Japanese Government. At SOM3 in September, the term of the current EC Chair, Dr. Omori, was extended to the end of 2011.
John Sullivan Wilson
John S. Wilson is a Lead Economist in the Development Economics Research Group of the World Bank. He is also currently a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. He joined the Bank in 1999 and directs empirical and policy research on trade facilitation, aid effectiveness, and regulatory reform issues, as they relate to economic development. Mr. Wilson also provides expertise in Bank operations and spent two years in the Bank’s Infrastructure Vice Presidency. He has participated in Bank projects under preparation and completed totaling over $1.3 billion. Mr. Wilson also provided leadership for the Bank in the establishment of the inter-agency Standards and Trade Development Facility. He also developed the initial concept for the Bank’s Trade Facilitation Facility in 2009 and is a member of the Facility’s Program Committee. He co-managed input to the G-20 Summit in Seoul on trade for the World Bank, among other policy dialogues recently. Mr. Wilson is working with the Trade Department currently on developing the first public-private partnership on trade for the Bank.
Mr. Wilson was previously Vice President for Technology Policy at the Information Technology Industry Council in Washington, D.C. and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for International Economics. He was also a Senior Staff Officer at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council and Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University. He has degrees from The College of Wooster and Columbia University in New York.
Scott Jacobs
Scott Jacobs is a leading expert and author with 26 years of experience in regulatory reforms and good business environments. He has worked with over 75 developing and industrialized countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas in designing and implementing programs of regulatory reform. He is currently Managing Director of Jacobs and Associates, a global corporation specializing in regulatory reform solutions. He organized and was Head of the influential OECD Program on Regulatory Reform from 1995-2001, where he wrote many of the recommended “good regulatory practices” that are now used as benchmarks worldwide. His work aims at producing low-cost and low-risk regulatory regimes that support private sector development and good governance. His specialties include comparative research on regulation; diagnostics of regulatory barriers to growth and poverty reduction; building national capacities to carry out broad-based reforms; helping governments implement regulatory impact analysis (RIA); simplifying administrative and licensing procedures and other barriers to entry; and reforming business registration. A pioneer in the RIA field, he has worked on RIA in over 30 developed and developing countries, and is the lead lecturer in the popular applied RIA courses offered globally twice a year in Rome by Jacobs and Associates and LUISS University. He has authored numerous articles and 23 books on regulatory reform, and is cited in international press world-wide.
Erik Wijkström
Mr. Erik Wijkström is a Counsellor in the WTO Division on Trade and Environment. He has worked at the WTO since 1995 on issues related to agriculture, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, trade and environment, trade and health and non-tariff measures in general. Mr. Wijkström is currently responsible for matters relating to the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade at the WTO.
Mr. Erik Wijkström has an M.Sc. from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden.
Sean S. Heather
Sean Heather is the Executive Director for Global Regulatory Cooperation. The Global Regulatory Cooperation (GRC) Project seeks to align trade, regulatory, and competition policy around the world in support of open and competitive markets.
Sean has held a number of positions during his twelve years at the Chamber. Prior to his current position he led the Chamber’s strategic forecasting initiative that was tasked with identifying emerging public policy issues of concern to the business community as well as examining trends in other issues like energy policy and healthcare.
Before that, Sean was part of Congressional and Public Affairs where he served as the division’s chief of staff and helped oversee the day to day operation of the division and coordinated the Chamber’s lobbying efforts, its grassroots initiatives and its regional offices located across the country to ensure that the efforts of the entire division were focused on the achievement of the Chamber’s public policy and political goals.
In this capacity he worked on issues as diverse as: international trade, tax, labor, healthcare, environment, energy, transportation, homeland security, immigration, technology, and corporate governance.
Sean also spent several years in the Chamber’s Chicago regional office which covered six states. Before joining the Chamber he worked for the Illinois Comptroller as well as with several political campaigns across the state. He holds an undergraduate degree and an MBA from the University of Illinois.
Peter Mumford
Peter Mumford works on regulatory issues in both the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development and the Treasury. He has participated in APEC and OECD regulatory quality initiatives over the years, and he established New Zealand’s RIA regime. He has had hands-on regulatory management roles, with oversight of reforms of business regulation in areas such as securities law, insolvency and building, and the negotiation of a number of international agreements to reduce technical barriers to trade and encourage coordination of business laws (specifically between Australia and NZ). He has also taken an academic interest in reform, completing a Masters thesis on factors affecting international regulatory cooperation, and a PhD on performance-based regulation.
Peter Ladegaard
Mr. Peter Ladegaard is a Principal Operations Officer in the World Bank Group’s Investment Climate Department. Since 2010 he has managed the IFC/World Bank Group’s Investment Climate programs in Eastern and Southern Africa. He also maintains a number of global knowledge management projects. Prior to taking up his recent assignment, Peter Ladegaard was the World Bank Group’s “Global Product Specialist” on Regulatory Governance and Business Licensing. He is the main author and editor of a series of regulatory reform studies under the World Bank Group’s “Better Regulation for Growth” initiative. Until joining the World Bank Group in 2005, Peter Ladegaard worked for OECD’s Regulatory Reform Program. Before the OECD, Peter Ladegaard worked in management consulting and for the Danish Ministry of Finance. He holds an MA in Political Science, and currently lives in Nairobi, Kenya.
Allison Miranda
Ms. Allison Miranda is a Senior Advisor within the Regulatory Affairs Sector at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) responsible for international regulatory policy matters. Prior to joining TBS, Allison was Deputy Director within the Invest in Canada Bureau at Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada leading a team responsible for investment attraction to Canada’s manufacturing sectors. Allison began her career at the Department of Agriculture working on files related to market development and investment attraction. Allison holds a Bachelor’s Degree in International Business and a Masters in Public Policy and Administration from Carleton University.
Cass Sunstein – Luncheon Keynote
Cass Sunstein is the current Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget. Before becoming Administrator, CassR. Sunstein was the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Mr.Sunstein graduated in 1975 from Harvard College and in 1978 from Harvard Law School magna cum laude. After graduation, he clerked for Justice Benjamin Kaplan of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court, and then he worked as an attorney-advisor in the Office of the Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice. He was a faculty member at the University of Chicago Law School from 1981 to 2008.
Mr. Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has been involved as an advisor in constitution-making and law reform activities in a number of nations. A specialist in administrative law, regulatory policy, and behavioral economics, Mr.Sunstein is author of many articles and a number of books, including After the Rights Revolution (1990), Risk and Reason (2002), Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (2005), Worst-Case Scenarios (2007), and Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler, 2008).
Sirma Karapeeva
Sirma Karapeeva is the Acting Manager for the Trade Environment Team of the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development and leads the team’s international technical barriers to trade agenda. Sirma has led the negotiation and implementation of TBT chapters of several New Zealand free trade agreements, including with Malaysia, Hong Kong China, China, P4 and currently the TPP. She also has significant experience with government to government arrangements such as mutual recognition arrangement and regulatory cooperation arrangements.
Sirma has been representing New Zealand at the APEC Sub-Committee on Standards and Conformance (SCSC) since 2004. She also represents the Ministry in the WTO TBT Committee, where New Zealand is leading the implementation of some of the recommendations of the Fifth Triennial Review of the WTO TBT Agreement completed in November 2009.
Carter Keithley
Carter Keithley became President of the Toy Industry Association in 2006. Mr. Keithley has thirty-five years of experience as an association executive and has served as full-time or part-time chief executive for more than a dozen industry associations and professional societies.
Prior to his position with TIA, Keithley served for twelve years as President of the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association, and eighteen years as Vice President of the association management firm, Smith, Bucklin & Associates in Washington, DC.
Mr. Keithley is currently a member of the Consumer Goods International Trade Advisory Committee (ITAC-4) of the U.S. Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration. He has been a volunteer director and chairman of several industry organizations, including the Associations Council of the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Council of the Housing Industry. Additionally, he was an appointee to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committee (CAAAC).
Mr. Keithley is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and practiced law from 1971 to 1975 before commencing his career as an association executive.
Sonia Bradley
Ms Sonia Bradley is Manager, International at Food Standards Australia New Zealand. In this role, Sonia is responsible for a range of international activities including managing the work of the Australian Co-Chair of the APEC Food Safety Cooperation Forum; managing a range of international, multilateral food safety capacity building activities; and developing collaborative links with key partner organizations. Prior to this, Ms Bradley worked in a range of areas in food regulation, in particular, nutrition and food labeling regulation.
Prior to working at FSANZ, Sonia worked in a range of food, nutrition and public health roles within federal and state government and also in clinical and academic settings. Ms Bradley has a Bachelor of Applied Science degree, a Masters degree in Science (Nutrition and Dietetics) and a Post Graduate Diploma in Public Health.
Zhang Rong
Ms. Zhang Rong comes from the Research Center for International Inspection and Quarantine Standard and technical regulations under the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection & Quarantine (AQSIQ) of the People’s Republic of China. This agency was also entitled as the National WTO/TBT-SPS Notification and Enquiry Center after China’s accession into WTO. Ms. Zhang works in the SPS division since she joined the agency in 2002. She obtained a Master’s Degree in Law from Renmin University of China. Ms.Zhang began to participate in the APEC Food Safety Cooperation Initiative in 2006, and she has been working as the Chinese co-chair’s assistant in the Food Safety Cooperation Forum since its establishment in 2007.
Peter Chau
Prior to joining the Canadian federal government in 2002, Peter spent 15 years in various engineering and product development positions with the telecommunications industry in Canada. In 2002, Peter joined Industry Canada as Manager of Infrastructure Security. Later he joined the department of Public Safety of Canada where he led the implementation of secured IT networks.
Peter re-joined Industry Canada in 2007 where his key responsibility includes the negotiation and implementation of Mutual Recognition Agreement for conformity assessment of telecommunication equipment in APEC TEL and CITEL PCC.I. As the Director of Technical Regulation and Conformance, Peter is also responsible for the development of the procedures for Market Surveillance to ensure continual equipment conformance in the marketplace.
Peter has an M.Eng. in Engineering Management from the University of Ottawa, and a B.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, University of Toronto.
Christian Turégano
Mr. Turégano received his law degree from UNAM (Mexico's National University) and a master of laws degree from American University, in Washington, DC.
Prior to his appointment as General Director of Standards, his experience in the Ministry of Economy included being legal advisor for the Undersecretary of Competitiveness, and Adjunct General Director of international Judicial Proceedings for the Mexican investigating authority on dumping and subsidies.
Before working for the Mexican Government he worked in leading firms in Mexico City for eleven years. His practice areas included commercial and investor-state arbitration, international law and project finance with sovereign funds.
Al Larson
Alan Larson, a non-lawyer, provides clients with strategic advice, counseling and representation at the intersection of international business and public policy. His practice encompasses international trade, investment and acquisitions, centering on the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS); sanctions and trade compliance; international energy transactions; protection of intellectual property; and compliance with anti-bribery rules.Mr. Larson is a member of the Board of Counselors of McLarty Associates, a strategic partner of C&B. He is Chairman of Transparency International/USA, a Board Member of Bread for the World, and a Distinguished Fellow at the Council on Competitiveness. He previously served as Under Secretary of State for Economics and is a Career Ambassador, the State Department’s highest honor.
Carolina Ramirez Joignant
Ms. Ramirez is the Head of Technical Barriers to Trade Sub-Department of the General Directorate of International Economic Relations (DIRECON), Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile. She has also been the Chairwoman of the National Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade of Chile; Chilean representative of the Subcommittee on Standards and Conformance in APEC; Negotiator of Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) issues for bilateral trade negotiations of Chile and responsible for the implementation of TBT commitments of FTA’s; Chile’s representative of the TBT Committee of the WTO; Chile’s contact point of the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement of the WTO; and she has participated in several international conferences on technical barriers to trade and related matters.
Ms. Ramirez holds a Master’s of Financial Economics and a B.S. as a Statistical Engineer from the University of Santiago.
Barbara Fliess
Barbara Fliess is a senior economist in the Trade & Agriculture Directorate of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and responsible for the Directorate’s program of work on non-tariff measures affecting trade in goods. That program has in recent years included analytical work on technical barriers to trade (TBT), an area where there are strong linkages to work in other parts of OECD, notably work on regulatory reform and good regulatory practice (GRP).
Prior to joining the OECD in 1995 Mrs. Fliess worked in the private sector and for the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, a research institute in Germany with close ties to the German federal government. Mrs. Fliess holds a Master Degree in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University and a PhD from the University of Geneva.
Michael Fitzpatrick
Michael Fitzpatrick currently serves as the Associate Administrator of the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), where he helps to lead the Obama Administration's development of regulatory policy and White House review of significant Executive Branch regulatory actions. President Obama has also appointed him to the governing council of the Administrative conference of the United States (ACUS). During the Presidential Transition, he served as deputy lead of the Executive Office of the President and Government Operations Agency Review Teams. Previously, he was a partner in the the Washington, D.C. office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, and an Assistant United States Attorney in Washington, D.C. During the Clinton Administration, he served as a Senior Advisor to the OIRA Administrator. Mr. Fitzpatrick clerked for Judge William Norris on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit after graduating with distinction from Stanford Law School. He holds a M.A. in American History from the University of Virginia and a B.A. from Brown University.