Ross leads the IPSASB staff team in their work to develop International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS).
Since joining the IPSASB staff in 2013 Ross has led the development and implementation of the IPSASB’s governance activities, and the establishment of the IPSASB Consultative Advisory Group. Ross also oversaw the IPSASB’s projects related to financial instruments accounting and the development of the IPSASB Strategy and Work Plan 2019-2023.
Prior to joining the IPSASB, Ross worked for several years for a big-4 accounting firm in Canada and Japan. Ross focused on complex accounting and audit assignments related to public utilities, industrial companies, and financial institutions. Ross is a Canadian Chartered Professional Accountant.
Birame N. Sock is the founder of Kweli, a newly developed B2B wholesale sourcing marketplace for products made in Africa. She is also the Founder and Managing Partner of Founder 5, Inc. a startup management group focused on developing and advising ventures with entrepreneurs in the US and Africa in various areas from e-commerce to media, consumer marketing
Birame is a tech visionary with over 20 years of experience as a technologist, entrepreneur and high-level executivewith a key focus on digital media. Originally from Senegal, she came up with the original idea for the first-ever music recognition solution launched in the United States and Canada, a mobile service that would later be known as Shazam worldwide. She has served on multiple Boards including as an Independent Board Member of a public company (NASDAQ) which was valued at over $1B market cap. Birame had the opportunity to be intimately involved in the development of a digital media strategy for major entertainment brands such as American Idol, Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali.
She was the Winner of the 2020 Cartier Women’s Initiative Award for North America and served as a member of the Jury from 2018 to 2020. Birame lives in Senegal and loves her daughter, good food, music and tennis.
Stefanie Sohm has worked in the field of sustainable transport, energy, and climate policy for over a decade. As an independent consultant, she supported development institutions, agencies, and governments in policymaking, project implementation, and stakeholder engagement.
In 2019, after living and working in North Africa for ten years, she expanded her work to the global level.
In July 2023, Stefanie joined the Kühne Foundation's Climate Center as advisor for transport and climate, where she now leads the work programme ‘Transport and Logistics for the Low-Carbon Society of 2050’. The Kühne Foundation is an independent, operational, international philanthropy that works to help decouple the growth of prosperity from greenhouse gas emissions and accelerate the transition to a just, low-carbon global society.
Stefanie holds a Master of Business Administration and is about to complete her Master in Transportation Sciences.
Dr. Vong Sok is the Head of the Environment Division and Assistant Director of the Sustainable Development Director, at the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Department of the ASEAN Secretariat.
He is a passionate and dedicated Environmental Professional, with over 20 years’ global environmental compliance and governance experience, including in-depth knowledge of environmental development, strategic planning, relationship building, operations control, and implementing environmental management systems.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in Forestry from Cambodia and a master’s degree in Environmental Science and Management from Belgium. He also completed his Ph.D. research on impact assessment and climate change at the University of Western Australia in 2012.
Professionally, he works on environmental assessment, planning, and management in Southeast Asia, intensively with government agencies, international organizations, development partners, and communities at the grass-root level. This provided him with specific assets to lead and coordinate at the strategic level; and deliver substantive impacts and contributions to this region.
Isaac Solomon is the President (Ag.) at the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), the regional development finance institution based in Barbados. Mr. Solomon is responsible for the strategic direction and overall management of the Bank and spearheads the Bank's engagement with its member countries and development partners.
Prior to this, Mr. Solomon held the position of Vice President (Operations) in which he provided leadership and direction to the Economics and Projects Departments and the Corporate Strategy Division.
Mr. Solomon holds a Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree from the University of the West Indies in Management, and a Master of Science degree in Financial Management from the University of London’s Centre for International Education in Economics. He also holds the Certified Public Accountant designation.
Vera Songwe is the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). Upon her appointment, she became the first woman to lead the institution in its 60-year history.
As Executive Secretary, Songwe’s reforms have focused on “ideas for a prosperous Africa”, and have brought to the fore critical issues of macroeconomic stability, development finance, private sector growth, poverty and inequality, the digital transformation, trade and competitiveness.
She was recently listed as one of Africa’s 50 most powerful women by Forbes and named as one of the ‘100 Most Influential Africans’ by Jeune Afrique in 2019. In 2017, New African Magazine listed her as one of the ‘100 Most Influential Africans’ and the FT named her one of the ’25 African to watch’ in 2015. Songwe is acknowledged for her long-standing track record of providing policy advice and her wealth of experience in delivering development results for Africa. She has written extensively on development and economic issues including on debt, infrastructure development, fiscal and governance issues. She is well published and contributes to the development debate across a broad spectrum of platforms including in the Financial Times.
Prior to ECA, she held a number of senior leadership roles with the International Finance Corporation and World Bank.
Mr. Pan Sorasak was appointed as Minister of Commerce of the Royal Government of Cambodia in April 2016.
Under his leadership, the Ministry of Commerce has pushed for the finalization of many draft laws and various amendments including food safety, competition, trade remedy, e-commerce and consumer protection, the latter three has been promulgated successfully in 2018 and 2019 respectively.
Mr. Pan has overseen many reforms within the Ministry of Commerce, including the move toward automation of the Ministry’s public services and the re-organization of one of the Ministry’s directorates into a specialized agency for consumer protection, food safety and competition. He also spearheaded the successful second Trade Policy Review of Cambodia in 2017. As an avid follower of technology, Mr. Pan had initiated the drafting of the e-commerce law, the e-Ministry initiatives, the Ministry of Commerce’s ICT Master Plan & Trade Information Website as well as the creation and standardization of Khmer Unicode script in computers.
Mr. Pan has a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Los Angeles, USA.