Steven is Group Head of Trade Facilitation, (GoTrade) at Deutsche Post DHL and has been with the Group for 10 years, originally joining in 2011 at DHL Express as Vice President, Customs & Regulatory Affairs for Europe and Head of Trade Compliance for Europe, the Middle East & Africa.
Before joining Deutsche Post DHL, Steven spent 26 years in the Public Sector, working for HM Customs, HM Treasury, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the IMF. He has worked in both the enforcement and policy areas on topics such as Customs, VAT and International Trade.
Steven sits on a number of public/private trade advisory groups and think tanks at both European and Global level and is also a member of the Steering Groups of the German and Global Alliances for Trade Facilitation and the UNDP Covid 19 Private Sector Global Facility.
Robin G. Reese holds a master’s degree in Political Science and a bachelor’s degree in European studies from the University of Oslo. He has previously worked at the Norwegian Embassy and Delegation to the UN/IAEA in Vienna, at the German-Norwegian Chamber of Commerce in Oslo and at Innovation Norway in Hamburg.
Since 2019, Robin G. Reese has worked in Norwegian Customs with Norway and EFTAs Free Trade Agreements related to Rules of Origin and Trade Facilitation, as well as the Generalized System of Preferences of Norway and the National Trade Facilitation Committee of Norway.
Business Administrator specialized in Foreign Trade, has more than 25 years of experience in the private sector.
She has extensive experience in different administrative areas, holding executive positions of high responsibility such as the Administrative Management in Automotive Business NEOHYUNDAI S.A., and the Management of the Society for the Fight Against Cancer, SOLCA, Cuenca.
During the Executive Presidency of the Chamber of Industries of Cuenca, a position from which she developed vast knowledge and training in negotiation, skills in conciliation, construction of agreements and leadership; She also held the Vice Presidency of the National Federation of Chambers of Industries and the Presidency of the Arbitration and Mediation Center of the Azuay Chamber of Production.
Similarly, she served as International Trade Executive at Banco Popular del Ecuador, achieving as a milestone during her management, the creation of the Department of Foreign Trade at the Cuenca branch.
His main areas of experience and knowledge have been imports, exports, customs procedures, forms of payment and international operations with small, medium and large companies; competencies that were also applied during her position as Executive Director and advisor to the Export Promotion Corporation, CORPEI.
Sheri Rosenow is a customs attorney and a counsellor in the WTO Market Access Division. She has been involved in WTO trade facilitation since the negotiations began and is currently responsible for the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement Facility. Prior to joining the WTO Secretariat, Ms. Rosenow worked as an advisor on customs and WTO accession issues for USAID projects in Central Asia and the Middle East. She started her career on the commercial legal staff of the US Customs Service.
Dr. Mohammad Saeed is Chief of Trade Facilitation and Policy for Business Section of the International Trade Centre (ITC) Geneva where he leads trade policy, trade facilitation and Quality for trade teams. He also served as Senior Technical Adviser on Trade and Transport Facilitation with UNCTAD. He has vast experience of working on trade facilitation issues at national, regional and multilateral level. He also worked as lead negotiator for Pakistan in WTO negotiations for the Trade Facilitation Agreement for six years. His work experience of over 15 years with Pakistan Customs has contributed towards his pragmatic approach based on the ground realities in the TF area. He has enriched his experience by working with many developing countries for identifying their TF needs assessment and developing their national implementation plans.
International Trade law and Procedure is the area of his prime interest. He has the honour to be Chairman and Panelist six dispute settlement cases in the WTO, including chairing four. He has also been Chairman of WTO Committee on Market Access for consecutive three years and Chairman of WTO Customs valuation Committee. He also served as Vice Chairman of General Assembly of Advisory Centre on WTO Laws (ACWL) for consecutive five years. He is visiting faculty to many institutes of academics and professional development including LLM programme of University of Barcelona. He is also UNNEXT expert on SME and Paperless Trade.
He holds Masters in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School and LLB from University of London. Besides having a postgraduate degree in Economics from University of London, he has his specialized training in International Trade Law from Harvard Law School.
CHEA Samnang, Deputy Director of International Customs Cooperation Department, have been working for Cambodia Customs for 15 years mainly on Customs Valuation, multilateral cooperation, the implementation of WTO TFA and negotiation and implementation of FTAs. He was recently recognized as WCO accredited expert on RKC and Mercator Programme Advisor on WTO TFA in 2019.
He is also working for the Supreme National Economic Council. He contributed his research on labor market, Cambodia Vision 2050, rectangular strategy of the government and policy framework of the digital economy of Cambodia. Before joining Customs, He has four year experiences as Economist Researcher, Head of globalization and economic integration research program at the Economic Institute of Cambodia.
He has written many articles about the economic affects of Cambodia’s accession to the WTO and Customs Procedures, some of which have been published in the Yale Journal and the Cambridge University Press. He taught the Trade Policy Review Course co-organized by WTO and Hong Kong University. He is currently remote Ph.D. Candidate at Adelaide University with Research topic on “Globalization, Uneven Growth and Human Capital Development: Case of Developing Country”
Since she joined UNCTAD in 2012, Arantzazu Sanchez has significantly contributed to enhancing National Trade Facilitation Committees (NTFCs).
Passionate about innovation and driving change, she had had leading roles in key initiatives like the Empowerment Programme for NTFCs, the UNCTAD Reform Tracker, the UNCTAD Database for NTFCs, and the Trade Facilitation e-Learning Platform, having also a major hand in crafting its curriculum.
Her academic credentials include studies in Political Sciences across Spain and Germany, topped with a Postgraduate Master from the College of Europe in Belgium. A Spanish national, she fluently speaks English, French, German, and Portuguese.
Her prolific output includes a vast array of publications on NTFCs.
Jayvee is the Regional Coordinator for the Pacific for ASYCUDA, the largest UNCTAD technical cooperation programme. He started with UNCTAD for the ASYCUDA Project in the Philippines in 1997. Jayvee was posted in Timor-Leste and Malaysia from 2002 to 2014, where he supported more than 20 country projects in Asia and the Pacific. He moved to Suva, Fiji in November 2021 where his office is involved in customs modernization projects in 15 countries and territory.
Shamika N. Sirimanne is the Director of the Division on Technology and Logistics of UNCTAD. She leads UNCTAD's trade logistics programme, including the work on trade facilitation, maritime transport, port management, and e-commerce and the digital economy. She also supervises UNCTAD’s largest technical cooperation programme, ASYCUDA—the Automated System for Customs.
Ms. Sirimanne has extensive experience in development policy, research and technical cooperation gained from international organizations, national governments, think tanks and universities. Prior to UNCTAD, she served as the Director of the ICT and Disaster Risk Reduction Division of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), where she spearheaded major regional cooperation programmes such as the Asia-Pacific Information Superhighway initiative, and Regional Drought Monitoring Mechanism.
During her tenure with ESCAP, Ms. Sirimanne also headed the trade facilitation programme, and led the macroeconomic policy work and ESCAP’s flagship publication, Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific. Prior to that, Ms. Sirimanne was with the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), where she led the economic policy team and the Economic Report on Africa, the flagship publication of ECA. She has also worked for the Canadian Ministry of Finance and the World Bank. Ms. Sirimanne holds a PhD in Economics.
Silvia Sorescu is a Policy Analyst in the Emerging Policy Issues Division of the OECD’s Trade and Agriculture Directorate, which she joined in 2010. Silvia is currently the Project Lead for the Directorate’s trade facilitation work, which includes the OECD Trade Facilitation Indicators covering over 160 economies. Her work is focused on mapping the policy environment for trade facilitation and linking trade facilitation issues to digital trade, global supply chains, and sustainability.
Silvia has as well in-depth country-specific experience, working on agro-food trade and domestic policy issues in economies such as China, Colombia, India, and Indonesia.
Prior to joining the OECD, she was a Research Associate at the World Economy Group, an academic research centre at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po Paris), working on various trade policy and European Union policy issues.
