 Speaker Biographies
Caroline McCarthy, Assistant Secretary, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Australia)
Caroline McCarthy is an Assistant Secretary at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the lead agency for Australia’s foreign, trade and developmental policy. She heads up the FTA Investment and Digital Trade Branch and was Australia’s chief negotiator for the Australia-Singapore Digital Economy Agreement. A senior trade negotiator, Caroline has led negotiations at the World Trade Organization, and in multiple bilateral and plurilateral negotiations on digital trade, services, movement of natural persons, investment, intellectual property and quarantine matters.
Hadri Sopri, Senior Assistant Director, Ministry of Trade and Industry (Singapore)
Hadri Sopri is a Senior Assistant Director at MTI, with dual roles under the Digital Economy and Services, and Multilateral Trade Policy teams. In this position, he leads negotiations for the WTO Joint Statement Initiative on E-commerce (JSI) and heads the WTO policy team. He was also part of the negotiating team for the Singapore-MERCOSUR FTA and Singapore-Australia Digital Economy Agreement.
Prior to this position, Hadri served as First Secretary (Economics) covering digital trade, services, and government procurement issues at Singapore’s Permanent Mission to the WTO, in Geneva, Switzerland, where he played a key role in launching the JSI negotiations.
Prior to assuming his post in Geneva, he was on the APEC policy team, where he worked on a wide range of economic issues, including regulatory matters, environmental goods, services and investment.
Eunice Huang, Head of APAC Trade Policy, Google (Singapore)
Eunice Huang leads Google’s trade policy work in the Asia-Pacific region and Google’s engagement with the World Trade Organization (WTO). Prior to her current role, she spent over a decade in the Singapore Government's Administrative Service, working on a diverse range of issues including foreign policy, energy policy, trade policy and economic development. She also represented Singapore abroad, as political secretary in the Singapore Embassy in Jakarta and as Deputy Permanent Representative in the Singapore Permanent Mission to the WTO and WIPO. Eunice is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Oxford University.
Toru Kajiwara, Director, International Trade Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (Japan)
Toru Kajiwara graduated from University of Oxford in 2001 with M.Phil in International Relations, and currently serves as Director, Services Trade Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan. Prior to his current assignment, he served as Director, Office of Global Health Cooperation, Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan (2017-2019), Counsellor at Permanent Mission of Japan to UNESCO (2014-2017) in Paris, and as Deputy Director at International Economy / OECD / European Union Economic Affairs Divisions (2013-2014), as well as the Southeast Asia Division (2010-2012) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 2006 to 2008, Mr. Kajiwara worked as Advisor at the Office of Executive Director for Japan in the World Bank Group in Washington DC. He was also involved in UN Security Council affairs and African development in his earlier careers at the Foreign Ministry.
Andrew Jory, Minister-Counsellor (Trade), Australian Embassy in Washington DC
Andrew Jory is the Minister-Counsellor (Trade) at the Australian Embassy in Washington DC. Prior to this position he was the Assistant Secretary, Goods and Market Access Branch, Office of Trade Negotiations in Canberra. In this role Mr Jory was Australia’s Deputy Chief Negotiator in the EU-Australia Free Trade Agreement and ran the goods agenda. Mr Jory was Australia’s Chief Negotiator in the Peru-Australia Free Trade Agreement and Pacific Alliance Free Trade Agreement. Prior to this Mr Jory ran Australia’s goods team in Australia’s Mission to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Geneva, Switzerland, where he played a key role in the WTO Decision which eliminated export subsidies in agriculture. Mr Jory was also Australia’s lead goods market access negotiator in the TPP and closed market access deals with the US, Mexico and Canada.
Moderated by James Carouso, Minister-Counsellor (Trade), Managing Director, BowerGroupAsia
Jim has been at the forefront of economic diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific for much of his career. Prior to joining BGA, he was the senior foreign policy advisor to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii. Earlier, Jim served as deputy chief of mission and chargé d’ affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Canberra, Australia. He also worked as the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Mission to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Jakarta, Indonesia, in mid-2019. Following a 14-year career in international banking and finance, Jim joined the U.S. Department of State in 1995. Since then he has served in a variety of economic and commercial roles in the Dominican Republic, South Africa, Australia, Thailand and Cyprus, including acting as a member of the U.S. teams negotiating free trade agreements with Australia and Thailand.
Jim also served as the counselor for economic affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta and as director of the State Department office responsible for relations with the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and East Timor. In 2019, he received the State Department’s distinguished honor award.
Jim holds a degree in economics from Hamilton College and a master’s degree in international finance from the American Graduate School of International Management in Glendale, Arizona. He lives in Singapore with his spouse, Elizabeth Visbeek.
|