Hera Abbasi is a Government and Regulatory Affairs Executive at IBM, where she works on market access and global trade across a range of tech issues. Prior to IBM, she was the bicameral, bipartisan Hill strategist and lobbyist for the Coalition of Services Industries. Previously, Ms. Abbasi was a Congressional Advisor in the State Department’s Bureau of Legislative Affairs, where she served as Congress’s point of contact on all Europe issues, including TTIP, Russia, Ukraine, Brexit, Turkey, NATO, the European Union, Ambassadorial nominations, and Congressional Delegations. Ms. Abbasi also worked on Capitol Hill for nearly a decade, including with House leadership. She is a board member of Women in International Trade (WIIT) and a co-chair for the Africa and Middle East section. She is also a member of the U.S.-Asia Institute's Congressional Circle, a co-chair of the Coalition of Services Industries’ Digital Trade Committee, and Chair of Information Technology Industry Council’s India Committee. In 2017, she was selected as a Fellow for the Next Generation National Security Leaders Program at the Center for a New American Security. Ms. Abbasi received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and her master’s degree from the Naval War College. Her languages include Spanish, Hindu/Urdu, Arabic, and Latin. She is the recipient of the Secretary’s Meritorious Honor Award and the Secretary’s Superior Honor Award; while on Capitol Hill, she was cited as a “Hill Staffer to Watch” in Foreign Policy’s

A former United Nations official, recognised for her inputs and implementation of trade policy and negotiations, a sustainability expert with over 20 years of on-the-ground trade facilitation and export development across Asia, Africa, South America and Europe, an entrepreneur at age 17, she recently took her latest venture, a tech-enabled sustainability platform, Inclusive Trade to becoming a B Corporation. A passionate advocate for women’s empowerment, an entrepreneur herself, she is a specialist in international trade in textiles, e-commerce and MSMEs.

Emily Beline is a Senior Counsel for International Regulatory Affairs with FedEx. In this capacity, she represents FedEx in regulatory and trade matters with an emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region. Emily advocates for FedEx before various U.S. government agencies, international fora, and collaboratively with other industry stakeholders. Emily joins FedEx after several years with the U.S. Federal
Government, including the U.S. Customs & Border Protection and the Office of the Chief Counsel for Trade Enforcement and Compliance with the International Trade Administration, where she counseled the U.S. Department of Commerce on the enforcement and defense of trade laws, specifically, antidumping and countervailing duty and defended the agency before the U.S. Court of International Trade. Prior to joining the U.S. Federal Government, Emily was a Trade Policy Officer with the Embassy of Canada in Washington D.C.

jAndrea Boron is the Director for Canadian Affairs in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). In this role, Ms. Boron is responsible for developing and coordinating U.S. international trade and investment policy with Canada.
Prior to joining USTR, Ms. Boron managed trade and food safety issues for South and Southeast Asia as an International Policy Analyst at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Before joining FDA, Ms. Boron spent 11 years as an International Trade Analyst with the U.S. International Trade Commission (Commission). During her tenure at the Commission, Ms. Boron
contributed to and led several investigations on industry competitiveness, trade preference programs, and discrete commodities, undertaking qualitative and quantitative analyses of complex topics in international trade for Congress and USTR. In addition, through a rotational assignment Ms. Boron served as the Director of Trade Policy for the Office of Textiles in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative from January 2010 through January 2011. Ms. Boron holds an M.A. in International Relations and Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a B.A. in French from The Ohio State University. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband and two sons.

Andrea Shalal reports on the White House, global trade and economics, the IMF and the World Bank, for Reuters. Over the span of nearly 34 years with Reuters, she has been based in Europe and the United States, covering the fall of the Berlin Wall, German reunification and the most recent German federal election, a host of U.S. elections, OPEC, energy and the environment, global arms sales, as well as politics, the arts and civil rights. She helped found a diversity initiative at Reuters in the United States in the late 1990s, has taught college and graduate courses on diversity and media ethics, and lectures occasionally about Arab-American literature and media issues. She has earned a “Blue Nose” for crossing the Arctic circle, hit 7Gs in a Super Hornet over the desert in UAE (without getting sick), and was among a group of Washington-based journalists selected as Reuters Journalists of the Year in 2015 for breaking news. She currently chairs the Washington chapter of the Journalism and Women Symposium, and serves as a shop steward in the News Guild for her team at Reuters.