Innovation for Inclusive Trade

Ms Brandford-Arthur has been working with IFAD for the past 16 years, and currently holds the position of Senior Partnerships Officer in the Global Engagement, Partnerships and Resource Mobilization Division. Responsible for coordinating IFAD's activities and engagement in South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC), Ms Brandford-Arthur is also in charge of the recently established China-IFAD SSTC Facility. Ms. Brandford-Arthur’s engagement in SSTC as an important development modality has seen her active participation and contribution to various international workshops and conferences, the most recent of which was the interactive dialogue on ‘Targeting Hunger: South-South and Triangular Cooperation for Transforming Agriculture’. This was convened by  H.E. Mr. Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, President of the 74th Session of the UN General Assembly, and discussed, inter alia, the scaling up and sharing of local solutions adopted by agriculture-dependent communities in different parts of the world.

Dr. Eun-Ju Kim is currently Chief a.i. of Digital Knowledge Hub Department, Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT) at ITU in July 2019, where she serves the ITU membership for capacity and digital skills development to strengthen capacities and bridge digital skills gaps, ICT data and analytics to ensure ITU’s global leadership as the main source of ICT data, creating enabling legal, policy, regulatory and market environments conducive to the development of telecommunications/ICTs, and the neutral contribution-driven ITU-D Study Groups through various platforms, services and products in close coordination and partnership with various stakeholders, which can contribute to achieving ITU Goals and the UN SDGs for a sustainable digital economy and society.

Sarah Mohammad Ghaleb, Ed.D. An American-born Saudi, has been leading training, social science research/evaluation, and entrepreneurship development for over 10 years. Dr. Ghaleb has a list of professional accomplishments that reflect her commitment to the design, development, and evaluation of social programming; particularly as it relates to sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship. She began this through her work in the U.S. by statistically evaluating evidence-based programming for public charter schools in the District of Columbia through a U.S. Department of Education grant. Then, she co-designed, developed, trained, and evaluated the U.S.-Saudi Women’s Forum on Social Entrepreneurship; a comprehensive training that introduced the concept of social entrepreneurship to women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through a U.S. Department of State MEPI grant funded program. She simultaneously co-founded Naqa’a Sustainability Solutions, one of the first social enterprises in the Kingdom, to address the pressing social and environmental needs in Saudi Arabia.

Lisa McAuley is the current CEO and founder of the Global Trade Professionals Alliance (GTPA), prior to this role she was the Chief Executive Officer of the Export Council of Australia (ECA) for five years and has worked in international trade for over 12 years. Lisa has driven ground-breaking research and advocacy projects around the global competitiveness of Australian SMEs and she has been pivotal in the development of GTPA, a global network for the development of international standards to drive and facilitate international trade. 

Oversees the portfolio of technical cooperation projects of over USD 42 million, delivered by eight professionals at UNIDO HQs in Vienna and over 120 project personnel in geographical regions: Africa, Arab, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Served UNIDO since 2000 in different capacities, as Acting Director for Strategic Planning and Coordination Department; Chief of Europe and Central Asia Programme; Senior Researcher in Strategic Research and Economics Department and Private Sector Development Department. Before joining UNIDO, Ms. Memedovic served as a project leader at the Netherlands Economic Institute and as a research fellow at the Tinbergen Institute of Erasmus University Rotterdam, Free University Amsterdam and University of Amsterdam.

Penelope (Penny) Naas is UPS Vice-President and District Manager for International Public Affairs and Sustainability since January 2015, based in Washington DC (since May 2019) and previously in Brussels, Belgium.  Penny began her UPS career in May 2012, managing the Public Affairs team for the EMEA Region, where she enhanced governmental understanding of UPS and the issues impacting the logistics industry. In 2014, Penny was also asked to oversee sustainability in Europe, and has worked to advance internal and external appreciation of the importance of sustainability for UPS.  

Peter is President of IIRR, one of the world's largest rural development organizations. Previously, he worked for the World Bank as an Expert Advisor before which he founded and led an NGO using design solutions to improve health.  Peter holds Masters degrees from the University of Oxford and Columbia University and has received numerous recognitions for social innovation including being cited by Forbes Magazine as having one of the 10 best sustainability ideas on the planet. He is a Devex ‘40 under 40’ international development leader and was acknowledged as leading one of the most innovative social impact companies in the world by Fast Company. 

Philippe Rudaz is Economic Affairs Officer at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) since 2015. At the Entrepreneurship Section of UNCTAD, he contributes to the elaboration of Entrepreneurship Policies in collaboration with members states which request assistance. Before that, Philippe was a research consultant at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland where he wrote his PhD on the relationship between financial innovation and development. 

Rupa is an international trade specialist by profession and an entrepreneur at heart. Rupa was 17yrs when she set up her first business, creating and selling contemporary fashion made from left over inventory fabrics to university students in Mumbai, India. This early venture inspired her studies in textiles, management and international trade, culminating in over 20 years of development work on the field with the United Nations, World Trade Organization (WTO) and several governments enabling small businesses to access global markets. Rupa founded the award-winning non-profit network, SPINNA Circle that has supported and connected several hundred women artisans in textiles across Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern & Western Europe. With a long time passion for crafts and technology, she recently coined the term Shop by Impact ® and launched Inclusivetrade.com, a revolutionary e-commerce community linking products and purchases to the United Nations SDGs. Inclusivetrade.com promotes sustainability while bringing to the forefront, the many untold stories of artisans and makers from around the world.

Wanjiku is a seasoned professional with over 18 years experience leading the design and implementation of economic development programming in the East African region.  She has specialised in market systems approaches for sustainable and inclusive solutions to economic growth especially targeting the vulnerable and under privileged groups in society.  Wanjiku has hands on experience in local, regional and global value chains (dairy / livestock, coffee, horticulture and fruits, staples, tourism, water distribution, seed and agriculture production input supply).  More recently, Wanjiku has developed expertise in trade development focusing on export capability and sustainability focusing on gender, environment and climate change and management of environmental and social risks.

William Asiko joined The Rockefeller Foundation in 2019 as the Managing Director for The Africa Regional Office. In this role, William oversees all Africa regional operations for the Foundation from the Nairobi office. Many of the Foundation’s core programs, from health to food, have been instrumental in bettering the lives of communities across sub-Saharan Africa. William was previously Executive Director of Grow Africa, an innovative agricultural development partnership between the World Economic Forum, the African Union and NEPAD that works to accelerate private sector investment into African agriculture. Under his leadership, Grow Africa ran over 40 programs across 12 countries in Africa with an ambitious growth plan to take the Grow Africa model across all countries in Africa.