Francis Aldhouse is Deputy Data Protection Commissioner for the United Kingdom. He joined the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner in 1985 from Surrey County Council, where he was an Assistant County Clerk.
Mr. Aldhouse graduated in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University and, in addition to being a Solicitor, holds a Msc in Management Studies.
He has directed the registration, administration, complaints, publicity and strategic policy functions for the Commissioner. He now directs the notification and investigation departments, policing and related matters and strategic data protection issues particularly at European and international levels.
Joseph Alhadeff has been Vice President for Global Public Policy at Oracle Corporation since January 1999, where he is responsible for developing and coordinating all global policy related positions for Oracle with special emphasis on electronic commerce and global policy issues. He leads a cross functional team that is developing overall data protection policy and technology infrastructure to address user, security and marketing needs. In addition, Mr. Alhadeff coordinates closely with Legal and Tax departments in developing internal solutions with policy dimensions in the areas of Internet tax, contracting and human resources on a national and international basis.
Before joining Oracle, Mr. Alhadeff was Vice President for Electronic Commerce and General Counsel of the US Council for International Business, where he was responsible for the development and coordination of all electronic commerce-related initiatives within the USCIB and among international affiliations, including the International Chamber of Commerce and the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the OECD. Mr. Alhadeff has also worked as a consultant in the area of Internet and technology strategy. He holds a JD and a Masters in Business Administration.
Sarah Andrews graduated from University College Cork, Ireland in June 1999 with an LLB degree. In her final year she specialized in information technology law and policy, and her thesis, a comparative study of US and European encryption policies, was published in the Journal of Information Law and Technology. Since February 2000 she has been working with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a public interest research center in Washington, DC. EPIC was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment and constitutional values. Her work there focuses on consumer privacy issues and international developments in internet policy making.
Richard Belczynski is Vice-President of clickNSettle.com's International Division for Dispute Conciliation. He is also an Adjunct Professor of International Law and Relations at St John's University. He holds a B.A in Political Science and a M.A. in International Law and Relations from St. John's University, and a J.D. From Hofstra University School of Law.
Karim Benyekhlef LL.D, is President and CEO of eResolution, and a Professor of Public Law at the Université de Montréal Faculty of Law, where he has been teaching since 1989. His areas of research include information technology and constitutional law. In 1997, Mr. Benyekhlef created and developed the CyberTribunal project, the first on-line electronic software system for conflict resolution by recourse combined with mediation and arbitration.
Mr. Benyekhlef has been a Canadian Barrister since 1985, and worked for the federal Justice Department between 1986 and 1989. Since 1995, Mr. Benyekhlef worked as editor of an electronic legal magazine, Lex Electronica. He has published several works and articles on the laws governing information technologies and has produced several reports on this topic for the Government of Canada and the Quebec Government.
Mr. Benyekhlef has participated in many international conferences, and served as a legal advisor to organizations such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
Mr. Bisogni has worked as a National Expert in the Legal Services office of the European Commission since September 1999. His work focuses on civil judiciary cooperation, civil law, access to justice and ADR. Mr. Bisogni received his degree in law in 1977 from University of Rome La Sapienza. He worked as a judge in Italy between 1981 and 1996 (1989/1996 civil Court of Rome) and holds a career qualification in Italy as a "Court of appeal judge". Prior to joining the European Commission, he was legal adviser in the Bureau of Legislation of the Italian Ministry of Justice between 1996 and 1999, where he worked on reform drafts concerning company law; access to justice and ADR; and consumer communitary law.
Matthias Blume, born 1969, has worked as a lawyer in the Department for Consumer Protection, Austrian Ministry of Justice since 1998. He studied law at the University of Vienna and was granted the diploma in 1995. He is a specialist in telecommunications, audiovisual and information society services and took active part in the development of the EU's E-Commerce Directive in 1999 as a member of the council working group.
Katharina Boele-Woelki studied law and Dutch at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin. A fellowship from the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst enabled her to prepare her thesis at the T.M.C. Asser Institute in The Hague on Dutch international family law, which was finished in 1982. From 1982 until 1992 she worked as a research officer at the private international law department of the T.M.C. Asser Institute in The Hague. In 1990 she began teaching private international law at the University of Utrecht where she was appointed professor of private international law and comparative law in 1995 and in 1998 director of studies of the Utrecht Institute of Legal Research. She teaches comparative law, private international law, international commercial arbitration and German law.
Professor Boele-Woelki is secretary of the Dutch Association of Comparative Law, member of the editorial boards of the Tijdschrift voor familie- en jeugdrecht, of the Electronic Journal of Comparative Law, member of the board of the International Law Institute (The Hague) and the Dutch Association of International Law. She is also a member of various associations, including the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Völkerrecht, the Dutch Organisation of Research (NWO-Reob) and the Centre for International Legal Cooperation. She is a corresponding member of UNIDROIT (Rome) and an associated member of the International Academy of Comparative Law.
Martin Bond is Assistant Director, Consumer Affairs Directorate, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) of the United Kingdom (UK). He is responsible for the government's consumer policy in relation to e-commerce, including consumer law, self-regulation and alternative dispute resolution. He is the UK representative on the OECD Consumer Policy Committee and was a member of the UK negotiating teams on the EC directive on e-commerce and the Brussels Regulation on jurisdiction. Mr. Bond has worked previously in the private office of the Minister for Trade and on competition policy in DTI and the Office of Fair Trading.
Helen is a graduate of the University of Bristol and the College of Law, Guildford, England. She works as in-house counsel in the General Counsel's Office of American Express in London supporting the business across EMEA. Prior to joining American Express, Ms. Bridges worked as a solicitor with the London law firm of Slaughter and May.
Giles Buckenham is a national expert in the Legal, Economic and Other Consumers' Interests Unit, Health and Consumer Protection DG, at the European Commission. He is responsible for a range of issues including e-commerce and access to justice. In particular, this includes legal and policy questions surrounding alternative dispute resolution and the establishment of a European Extra-Judicial Network (EEJ-Net). Mr. Buckenham previously worked as a Legal Adviser on consumer affairs in the UK Department of Trade and Industry and as a practising Barrister.
Asunción Caparrós is Manager of European Affairs of ABN AMRO Bank, actively involved in e-commerce legislation and self-regulation and one of the co-drafters of the GBDe Trustmarks Guidelines (ABN AMRO Bank is the European Chair of the GBDe Trustmarks Working Group). Before joining ABN AMRO, she was a consultant on energy and environmental issues, a legal advisor in the European Commission on public procurement and EU citizens' rights, and Director of EU Affairs for the Federation of European Direct Marketing (FEDMA). She is a lawyer and a political scientist, and holds a master's degree in European studies and a master's degree in environmental management.
Maria Livanos Cattaui became the Secretary General of International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in July 1996. Her immediate task was to raise the public profile of ICC as the world business organization and make it a more vigorous advocate of business in dealings with international organizations and governments. Her most recent achievement to that end was ICC's 33rd World Congress in Budapest. Attended by an impressive collection of influential business and political leaders, the congress attracted worldwide media coverage and marked the emergence of the ICC as an important player on the international stage.
Mrs Cattaui has been instrumental in establishing a close global partnership between ICC and the United Nations. The partnership has led to greater business input into UN economic activities, given rise to a powerful public sector/private sector alliance and subsequently boosted business activity in the world's least developed countries.
Mrs Cattaui has also worked hard to champion the role of world business in the new economy. By placing ICC at the vanguard of international policy making on business applications to the internet, she has helped world business to become a vital player in the new -- and constantly evolving -- cyber world.
She works regularly with the World Bank, speaking often at many of their international seminars and in 1998, convened the Geneva Business Dialogue -- a conference designed to build cooperation between business and governments in meeting the challenges of globalization. Held against a background of global financial and economic turmoil, the conference attracted extensive media coverage.
Mrs Cattaui worked with the World Economic Forum in Geneva from 1977 to 1996. Her role was crucial in the development of the Foundation as a unique partnership of leaders. She was responsible for the celebrated Annual Meeting in Davos. Mrs Cattaui rose to become a member of the Executive Board, then Managing Director.
She holds board and advisory board memberships on the Institute of International Education (New York), the International Youth Foundation (Baltimore), the International Crisis Group (Brussels), the Council of Women World Leaders (Kennedy School/Harvard), the Center for Strategic & International Studies (Washington), the EastWest Institute (New York), the Elliott School of International Affairs (George Washington University), the Schulich School of Business, York University (Toronto) and the London Symphony Orchestra.
Mrs Cattaui, who is of Swiss nationality and Greek origin, was educated in the United States. She is an Honours graduate of Harvard University. During her early career, she was engaged in writing and research, then editorial supervision and planning with Encyclopaedia Britannica, and with Time-Life Books. She was also a freelance editor and writer of books, speeches and articles.
Michelle Childs is Head of Policy Research and Analysis at the Consumers Association in the UK. She oversees policy outputs in 9 campaigning areas as well as advises on corporate policy issues. She has a particular interest in e-commerce issues and is a member of the TACD E-Commerce Working Group. Previously, Ms. Childs was a policy advisor at OFTEL, specializing in broadcasting and convergence and was a solicitor in a City of London law firm.
Bernard Clements is with the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) in Seville, part of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. He heads up a Unit supporting EU policy development with long-range socio-economic impact assessment studies. This includes work carried out in collaboration with other JRC institutes on issues affecting trust and confidence in the use of electronic commerce.
He was previously with what was then DG XIII, working on regulatory policy in telecommunications and broadcasting, and on the reforms needed to address the post-1998 competitive environment for telecommunications services and infrastructure. He has also supported EU assistance programmes in telecommunications regulation in Latin America and Eastern Europe.
Prior to joining the Commission in 1993, Mr. Clements spent fifteen years as a consultant and, prior to that, ten years working in manufacturing and operating companies in the telecommunications sector in Europe and North America. Mr. Clements has a degree in electrical engineering from Manchester University, and is a Fellow of the UK Institution of Electrical Engineers.
Roger Cochetti has been Senior Vice President and Chief Policy Officer of VeriSign since February 2000. In that position, he is VeriSign's spokesman to, and liaison with, US and non-US governments, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and to the Internet and electronic policy communities. He is a globally-recognized leader in the field of policy and regulation of electronic commerce.
Before joining VeriSign, Mr. Cochetti was Program Director, Internet Policy and Business Planning for IBM Corporation, where he led IBM's global activities in the e-commerce policy field, including such areas as the regulation of content, privacy, taxation, e-mail, and trade on the Internet. Earlier, he had managed the business development activities of IBM's Personal Communications Services unit. From 1981 through 1993, Mr. Cochetti was with Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT), where he served as Vice-President of Business Development & Planning for COMSAT Mobile Communications. Prior to joining COMSAT, he served as an official in the United States Department of State, where he was Assistant Director-Legislative & Public Affairs of the U.S. Development Cooperation Agency (IDCA), the principal Federal agency responsible for US foreign aid programs.
Mr. Cochetti is a graduate of Georgetown University and is the author of a book and numerous articles on Internet and telecommunications topics.
As Manager for Technology Policy, Scott Cooper is responsible for global electronic commerce, Internet and advanced network services issues for Hewlett Packard (HP). He has worked closely on U.S. legislation dealing with electronic signatures and authentication, telephone competition, Internet taxes and consumer protection issues such as privacy. A key goal for HP is to harmonize international trade policies in order to develop a seamless and global electronic marketplace.
Before working for HP, Mr. Cooper was Director for Electronic Commerce at the American Electronics Association (AEA), and Manager for Telecommunications Policy at Intel. He also worked for many years for the Commerce Committee of the US House of Representatives where he was responsible for oversight of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC).
Mr. Cooper received his undergraduate degree in economic history from Berkeley in 1972, and his Masters in Political Science from George Washington University in 1982. He has also been a public works specialist for the Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration, served in the Peace Corps in Ecuador, and sold books throughout Northern California.
Malcolm Crompton is Australia's third Federal Privacy Commissioner, appointed to the position for 5 years commencing on 20 April 1999, with a mandate to take privacy protection in Australia into the new millennium. He came to the role at a time when the Federal Government was looking to introduce a new approach to protecting privacy with a "light touch" legislative scheme applying to the private sector. He has a particular interest in online privacy issues and is relishing some of the challenges facing Privacy Commissioners in fulfilling their role in protecting privacy in this new global environment. He sees these challenges more broadly as an opportunity for rethinking governmental structures and the role of regulators in the new environment.
To his position, Mr. Crompton brings experience from a varied background. Prior to joining AMP Ltd, a major financial institution, where he worked from 1996 and 1999, as Manager of Government Affairs in Canberra, he held several positions in the Federal government, including a number of executive positions in the Federal Department of Finance. He also worked in the transport and health areas. Malcolm began his career as a research scientist.
President Clinton appointed James Dorskind as Acting General Counsel of the Department of Commerce on September 14, 2000 and nominated him for the position of General Counsel on October 26, 2000. Mr. Dorskind plays a key role for the US Administration on a wide range of jurisdictional and other electronic commerce issues, including the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in the context of online transactions.
Prior to his appointment as Acting General Counsel, Mr. Dorskind served as the General Counsel for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and as the Departmental Executive Secretary. Before joining the Department of Commerce, Mr. Dorskind worked at the White House for almost four years, leaving as Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Presidential Correspondence. Mr. Dorskind came to the White House from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he had practiced law primarily with the firm that became known as Friedman, Ross & Dorskind, P.C.
Christopher R. Drahozal is a law professor at the University of Kansas School of Law in Lawrence, Kansas. He has taught and lectured on commercial arbitration to students, lawyers, and judges, in the United States and Europe. He has published articles on the law and economics of commercial arbitration, including both consumer arbitration and international commercial arbitration, and he is the author of a forthcoming commercial arbitration casebook. Previously, Professor Drahozal was in private law practice in Washington, D.C., and served as a law clerk for the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague, the United States Supreme Court, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Born in 1962, Eric Ducoulombier was educated in France. He studied law at the University of Lille, France where he graduated in European law. He worked until 1990 in the European Affairs Department of Arthur Andersen in Brussels. From 1990 to 1992, he worked as a lawyer in a Belgian law firm specialising in European law. He then joined the European Commission (DG XV, Internal Market and Financial Services) and worked, until 1997, in the Banking Unit where he was in charge of the application and interpretation of the "second banking directive." Since 1997, Mr. Ducoulombier has worked in the Media, Commercial Communications and Unfair Competition Unit, where he is in charge of the international private law and financial services aspects of electronic commerce as well as the issue of alternative dispute resolution of e-commerce disputes.
Nora Femenia has a B.A. in social psychology, and a Ph.D. in conflict resolution from Syracuse University. Her consulting experience, in the US and several Latin American countries, includes cross-cultural interventions in conflict resolution systems designed for development projects; mediation in inter-group disputes; and online mediation in two languages. She oversees two online dispute websites. Her particular line of research is cross-cultural differences at the mediation table and their impact on outcomes. Dr. Femenia has been full or part time faculty at American University and Nova Southeastern University, and now is associate faculty at Florida International University.
Carmen Fernández Neira received a degree in law at Complutensis University in Madrid and Masters in European Union Law at Carlos III University in Madrid.
In 1998, she joined the Spanish advertising self-regulation organisation Asociación de Autocontrol de la Publicidad (AAP) -- which is a member of the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA) -- to work in its Legal Department. She has taken part in the development of AAP's policies on Internet issues and also works on international affairs for the organisation. A member of the EASA Internet Working Group since 1999, Ms. Fernández Neira currently combines her tasks at the AAP with her role as the Chairman of the EASA Internet Working Group.
Anna Fielder is the Director of the Office for Developed and Transition Economies at Consumers International. As one of the four regional directors, she is responsible for the development and implementation of the organisation's work principally in Europe, Middle East and North America. Her office has initiated important international research policy projects in the area of electronic commerce and sustainable consumption, set up the secretariat and process of the Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD), and is carrying out large-scale development programmes in Eastern Europe.
Before joining Consumers International in 1996, Ms. Fielder worked for Consumers Association, UK, where she has carried out many consumer investigations and campaigns. She is a graduate of London University, with a BA and a Masters in Classics.
Peter Ford is the First Assistant Secretary, Information and Security Law Division of the Australian Attorney-General's Department. The Division was founded in February 1997 and is responsible for policy relating to privacy, freedom of information, intellectual property, legal aspects of electronic commerce and support to the Attorney General on national security and electronic surveillance aspects of law enforcement policy. He chairs the OECD Working Party on Information Security and Privacy.
Phillipe Fouchard est Professeur agrégé des Faculté de droit (droit privé) et a fait sa thèse de Doctorat d'Etat sur L'arbitrage commercial international. Il est depuis 1980 Professeur à l' Université-Panthéon-Assas (Paris II) où il enseigne le droit international privé, le droit du commerce international et le droit de l'arbitrage.
Mr. Fouchard est également Directeur de l'Ecole doctorale de droit international, droit européen, relations internationales et droit comparé et Président du Conseil d'administration du Centre d'études des modes altematifs de règlement des conflits (CEMARC). Consultant juridique en droit du commerce international et en droit de l'arbitrage, il est aussi arbitre, et President de tribunal arbitral dans une quarantaine d'arbitrages internes ou internationaux. Mr. Fouchard est l'auteur de divers ouvrages et publications en droit du commerce international, droit international privé, droit commercial, droit bancaire, ainsi que de nombreux articles, rapports et notes sur l'arbitrage (droit interne, droit international, droit comparé). Il est co-auteur (avec E Gaillard et B. Goldman) du Traité de l'arbitrage commercial international, Litec, 1996,1225 p., also edited in English (Fouchard Gaillard Goldman On International Commercial Arbitration) by E. Gaillard, 1. Savage, Kiuwer Law International, 1999. Il est également éditeur de L'OHADA et les perspectives de l'arbitrage en Afrique, Bruylant, Bruxelles, et Rédacteur en chef de la Revue de l'arbitrage (Litec, Paris).
Ms. Fox is an advocate for consumer protection for the Consumer Federation of America, an association of over 270 pro-consumer state and national organizations that speaks on behalf of consumers. As Director of Consumer Protection since 1997, she specializes in financial services, electronic commerce, and consumer protection issues. She is also Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. She serves on the Steering Committee and on the E-Commerce Working Group of the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD). Ms. Fox is Vice President of the Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, a volunteer statewide advocacy organization.
Ms. Fox formerly worked as Director of the Allegheny County Bureau of Consumer Affairs in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; as an Extension Home Economist for the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Service; and as Regional Manager, Bureau of Consumer Services, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. She has served on the Consumer Advisory Council to the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Consumer Affairs Advisory Committee to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and the Leadership Council to the Virginia Tech Family and Consumer Sciences program.
Ms. Fox holds a Masters degree from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and a Masters degree in consumer economics from Cornell University. Her undergraduate degree in home economics is from the University of Tennessee.
She received the 1998 Advocate's Award from the National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators and the Friend of the Family award from the Virginia Association of Family and Consumer Sciences.
Born in 1963, Marco Gasparinetti is an Italian national. In 1986, he graduated in Law with full marks and honours from the University of Bologna. From 1986 to 1991, he worked as a corporate lawyer in a newspaper publishing company.
Mr. Gasparinetti has been a civil servant at the European Commission since November 1991 and has been responsible for drafting and negotiating The Commission's Green Paper on Access of Consumers to Justice (1993); The Action Plan on the Settlement of Consumer Disputes in the Single Market (1996); The Directive on Injunctions for the Protection of Consumers' Interests (1996); The modified proposal for a Directive on comparative advertising (1996); and
The Proposal for a Directive on the Legal Protection of Conditional Access Services (1997).
In 1997 he joined the Internal Market DG. As a member of Unit E1 (data protection and the free movement of information), he was responsible for the creation and management of the EU Data Protection Committee, and took an active role in the EU-US discussions which led to the "Safe Harbor" arrangement.
In 2000 he was seconded by the European Commission to the Data Protection Authority in Italy, where he played a key role in organising the 22nd International Conference on Privacy and Data Protection (Venice, 27-30 September 2000). Mr. Gasparinetti is the author of numerous publications on privacy and consumer redress.
Michael Geist is a law professor at the University of Ottawa specializing in Internet and e-commerce law. He is also and Director of E-Commerce Law with the Toronto law firm of Goodmans LLP. Professor Geist has obtained law degrees from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Cambridge University in the UK, and Columbia Law School in New York. He has written numerous academic articles and government reports on the Internet and law. Professor Geist is a national columnist on cyberlaw issues for the Globe and Mail, the creator and consulting editor of BNA's Internet Law News, a daily Internet law news service, editor of the monthly newsletter, Internet and E-commerce Law in Canada (Butterworths), on the advisory boards of several leading Internet law publications including Electronic Commerce & Law Report (BNA), the Journal of Internet Law (Aspen) and Internet Law and Business (Computer Law Reporter) as well as the author of the textbook Internet Law in Canada (Captus Press). He is regularly quoted in the national and international media on Internet law issues and has appeared before government committees on e-commerce policy. More information can be obtained at his personal Web site at http://www.lawbytes.com .
Fabien Gélinas is presently a Vice President and the General Counsel for eResolution. A Canadian barrister of ten years' standing and former Law Clerk of the Supreme Court of Canada, he holds graduate degrees from the University of Montreal and the Paris School of Diplomatic and Strategic Studies, and a Doctorate in Law from the University of Oxford.
Before joining eResolution, Mr. Gélinas was General Counsel of the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). Several aspects of his responsibilities directly concerned information and communications technology as applied to dispute resolution. In his research and development departments, he had responsibility for computerized research and information retrieval systems as well as the development of case- management systems. In his publications and legal departments, he oversaw the ICC Court's Web exposure and was responsible for legal advice to the Court on e-commerce and communications technology issues. Mr. Gélinas also ran the ICC International Centre for Expertise, which implements the DOCDEX Rules, a recent, fast track, e-mail- and fax-based global dispute resolution system for the banking sector. He was also ex officio Secretary of the International Commission on Arbitration, the world's foremost dispute resolution think-tank.
Mr. Gélinas was a Lecturer at the Institute of Comparative Law and the School of Diplomatic and Strategic Studies in Paris, and Guest Lecturer at University College Dublin. He was involved in the preparation of international and national legal instruments around the world and speaks at countless international conferences on legal aspects of electronic commerce and dispute resolution.
Marcie Girouard is Assistant Deputy Commissioner of the Fair Business Practices Branch, Competition Bureau, Industry Canada, where she has worked since 1984 and has held a variety of increasingly responsible positions in different branches of the organization.
She was appointed to the position of Assistant Deputy Commissioner in June 1998. She is responsible for administration and enforcement of the Competition Act and for enforcement and compliance policy in relation to the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, the Textile Labelling Act and the Precious Metals Marking Act. She is also currently responsible for initiatives relating to deceptive advertising and the Internet.
Between May 1997 and June 1998, Ms. Girouard was Acting Director of International Affairs for the Economics and International Affairs Division of the Bureau, where she was responsible for the coordination of policies and procedures relating to international enforcement cooperation, and for Competition Bureau participation in international fora dealing with competition policy issues.
Ms. Girouard holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Queen's University, and a Bachelor of Laws degree from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University.
David Goddard is a New Zealand barrister with a wide ranging commercial litigation and law reform practice, with an emphasis on company law, competition law, and private international law. His law reform practice includes advising governments and intergovernmental organisations on priorities for reform of commercial laws and institutions to facilitate market activity, and assisting in the implementation of those reforms.
Mr. Goddard has a particular interest in the implications of electronic commerce for the law relating to international transactions and international disputes. He has published and taught in this field, and is a member of the New Zealand Law Commission's advisory group on electronic commerce, and an adviser to New Zealand Government agencies on legal aspects of e-commerce and e-government. He has also advised the New Zealand Government on more general issues relating to co-ordination of business law with other countries, in particular Australia. Mr. Goddard has represented New Zealand at meetings of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCPIL) in relation to the proposed convention on jurisdiction and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters, and is actively involved in work on the implications of e-commerce for that project.
Susan Grant is Vice President for Public Policy at the National Consumers League (NCL), focusing on privacy, telecommunications, electronic commerce and financial services issues. She joined the staff of the NCL in 1996 as Director of the National Fraud Information Center and Internet Fraud Watch programs, which provide advice to the public about telemarketing and online offers and relay reports of suspected telemarketing and Internet fraud to law enforcement agencies. She also coordinates the Alliance Against Fraud in Telemarketing and Electronic Commerce, a coalition of consumer organizations, government agencies and private businesses that works to educate the public about safe shopping by telephone and online.
Veteran fraud-fighter, Ms. Grant began her career in consumer protection in the Northwestern Massachusetts District Attorney's Office, where she worked for seventeen years as an investigator and Director of the Consumer Protection Division. She subsequently took a position as Executive Director of the National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators (NACAA), an organization of local, state and federal consumer protection officials.
Ms. Grant has been active for many years in the National Association of Consumer Protection Investigators, and received the Cal Leitch Award from that organization in 1995 for excellence in investigating crimes against consumers. She was President of the Massachusetts Consumer's Coalition for many years and serves on several corporate consumer advisory councils.
Dana Haviland, a partner in the Silicon Valley law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, has extensive experience in international and domestic arbitration, litigation and mediation of intellectual property and commercial disputes for technology and life sciences companies. She is a member of the NAFTA Advisory Committee on Private Commercial Disputes; the World Intellectual Property Organization Panel of Arbitrators and Domain Name Panel; the American Arbitration Association Panel of Arbitrators and Mediators for International, Intellectual Property, Technology and Large Complex Cases; the International Chamber of Commerce Court of Arbitration roster of Arbitrators; the National Patent Board Panel of Arbitrators; the online Domain Name Panel and Advisory Board of eResolution,Inc.; the Panel of Arbitrators and Advisory Committee on Intellectual Property of the British Columbia International Commercial Arbitration Center; and the Korean Arbitration Board. She chairs AAA's Intellectual Property and Technology Advisory Council for Northern California, the ICC's Northwest Subcommittee on Arbitration, and the American Bar Association International Commercial Arbitration Committee of the Section on International Law and Practice. Ms. Haviland has taught arbitration law and procedure worldwide for the AAA, the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and the U.S./Mexico Conflict Resolution Center. She holds a J.D., with Distinction, from Emory University School of Law.
Peter Møller Jensen is Senior Manager, European Union Relations/Regulatory Affairs at the Legal Department of Visa International EU, the European region of Visa International. Based in Brussels, he is responsible for the European regulatory affairs of Visa with a specific emphasis on electronic commerce related issues. Before joining Visa Mr. Jensen was Vice President, Legal Department and Executive Board Secretariat at Den Danske Bank, Copenhagen dealing with a wide variety of EU-related legal matters. He also spent two years as Head of Section, Danish Ministry of Health co-ordinating the Danish efforts in the field of EU foodstuffs regulation. Mr. Jensen is a member of the Danish Bar Association and has worked in private practice for three years. He holds a law degree from the University of Århus, Denmark.
Ethan Katsh is Professor of Legal Studies and Co-Director of the Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution at the University of Massachusetts. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and the author of two books on law and technology, Law in a Digital World (Oxford University Press, 1995) and The Electronic Media and the Transformation of Law (Oxford University Press, 1989), as well as many articles. During the last ten years, he has been involved in many projects involving the application of technology to law and legal processes.
Since 1996, Professor Katsh has been involved in a series of projects involving online dispute resolution. He was one of the magistrates in the Virtual Magistrate project and was founder and co-director of the Online Ombuds Office. In 1997, with support from the Hewlett Foundation, he established, with Janet Rifkin, the Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution at the University of Massachusetts. From 1997-1999, he mediated a variety of disputes online, involving domain name/trademark issues, intellectual property conflicts, disputes with Internet Service Providers, and others. In early 1999, he supervised a project with the online auction site eBay, in which over 150 disputes were mediated during a two week period. Later in 1999, he co-founded Disputes.org ( http://www.disputes.org ), which participated with eResolution in becoming one of four providers accredited by ICANN to arbitrate domain name disputes. He is also a consultant to SquareTrade.com, an Internet start-up focusing on online ADR. Among his recent publications are "The New Frontier: Online ADR Becoming a Global Priority (Dispute Resolution Magazine, Winter, 2000) and "E-Commerce, E-Disputes, and E-Dispute Resolution: In the Shadow of "eBay Law" (with Rifkin and Gaitenby) (15 Ohio State J. of Dispute Resolution 705 (2000) ( http://www.umass.edu/cyber/katsh.pdf )
Prior to joining the University of Paris, Catherine Kessedjian was Deputy Secretary General of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, on secondment from the Université de Bourgogne in France, where she was in charge of the preparation and monitoring of the negotiations for the proposed worldwide Convention on jurisdiction and judgments. She was also in charge of commercial matters, including electronic commerce. She currently acts as mediator or arbitrator in a select number of transnational disputes.
Prior to joining the Hague Conference, Ms. Kessedjian taught international business transactions, European business law (including competition law, international dispute resolution), and participated in several specialized seminars in international litigation and international commercial arbitration. She was the Director of the European Law Center of the Université de Bourgogne and Director of a post-graduate program for international business lawyers. Ms. Kessedjian was a practicing attorney in Paris from 1982 to end of 1998, mainly focusing on transnational litigation.
Wibo Koole is head of the Consumer Policy Department of Consumentenbond, the Dutch consumers organization with over 650 000 members. The Consumer Policy Department organizes campaigning and lobbying activities towards producers, producer organizations and governments, nationally and internationally.
The Consumentenbond's mission is to enable consumers to make easier and better choices, with respect to man and environment. Its main campaign areas are health, food, and the information society (including e-commerce, the Internet, telecommunications, and broadcasting). Mr. Koole is currently leading Consumentenbond's The Digital Consumer campaign. Consumentenbond is an active member of BEUC, the Brussels based European lobbying organisation for consumers.
Mr. Koole is a member of the Consumer Committe of the Dutch Sociaal-Economisch Council (the official government advisory board on economic affairs) and an alternate member of the Consumer Committee of the European Union. He is a political scientist by education, has worked as an assistant professor at the Nijmegen University and as a management consultant.
Albert Hendrik (Benk) Korthals was born in Voorschoten on 5 October 1944. After leaving secondary school and completing his military service with the Royal Netherlands Navy, he attended the University of Leiden, where he graduated in 1973.
From 1974 to 1998, Mr. Korthals maintained a legal practice in Rotterdam, in addition to which he was from 1982 to 1998 a member of the Lower House of the States General. He was also a member of the council of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and chairman of the party's umbrella committee for local party organisations in the Rotterdam area.
Mr. Korthals has been a member of the board of the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies and chairman of the Associations for Legal Aid to Conscripts.
On 3 August 1998, Mr. Korthals was appointed Minister of Justice in the second Kok government.
Christopher Kuner is an attorney in the Brussels office of the international law firm Morrison & Foerster LLP, specializing in electronic commerce and legal aspects of the Internet. In particular, Mr. Kuner has advised companies throughout Europe on legal issues relating to data protection, encryption, digital signatures, online banking, Internet taxation, and the sale of goods and services on the Internet. A particular focus of Mr. Kuner's practice are regulatory developments in Europe relating to e-commerce, both at the EU and the Member State level.
Mr. Kuner is a member of the Legal Advisory Board of DG Information Society of the European Commission, and a member of legal working groups on e-commerce issues of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the Internet Law and Policy Forum (ILPF), and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). He is also Vice-Chair of Committee R4 of the International Bar Association. The author of numerous articles and the book Internet für Juristen (Verlag C.H. Beck), Mr. Kuner is a frequent lecturer on Internet-related topics. He created and maintains a website on recent legal developments in Germany in the areas of Internet and e-commerce ( www.kuner.com ).
Stephen KM Lau was appointed in July 1996 as the first Privacy Commissioner for Hong Kong with responsibility to promote and enforce compliance with the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance which was enacted to provide adequate protection for the use of individuals' personal data in both the public and private sectors.
Mr Lau has split his 30 years' experience in the information technology and banking industries between the government and private sectors. He has formerly held positions with EDS Hong Kong and the Asia division of Citicorp's International Banking and Finance sectors. Prior to that he was the Data Processing Manager for the Hong Kong Government Data Processing Agency.
Philippa Lawson is Counsel at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre in Canada. She has been practising administrative law and consumer advocacy with the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) in Ottawa since her call to the Ontario Bar in 1991. She has a Master's degree from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (1986) and a Law degree from Queen's University (1989).
Ms. Lawson has led consumer interventions in all major telecommunications proceedings before the Canadian regulator since 1990, and has actively participated in industry working groups to design rules and procedures for the implementation of local competition in Canada. She has also acted for consumer groups in regulatory matters before the Ontario Energy Board, and has represented various public interest parties before the Federal and Supreme Courts of Canada on matters ranging from the abandonment of railway lines to voting rights. She is a member of the Standards Council of Canada's Consumer and Public Interest Committee, as well as the Canadian Standards Association Technical Committee on Privacy, which developed CAN/CSA-Q830-96, The Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information. Ms. Lawson was a member of the Canadian delegation to the 1998 OECD Ministerial on Electronic Commerce, as well as the 1999 OECD Forum on Ecommerce, and is actively involved in various public and private initiatives to improve consumer protection in the evolving marketplace.
Cara Cherry Lisco is currently Director of SquareTrade Online Dispute Resolution Network. She relocated from New York to San Francisco to join SquareTrade as its first employee. In her role at SquareTrade, she has created the company's online dispute resolution service from the ground up, tailoring services to meet the needs of a range of marketplaces, developing online dispute resolution processes, and launching systems for recruiting, training and supervising over 250 remote mediators and arbitrators as well as a full time in-house staff to support them. Ms. Lisco also serves as SquareTrade's liaison on issues concerning public policy, jurisdiction and consumer rights.
Ms. Lisco practiced for four years at the law firm of Koob & Magoolaghan, where she litigated federal civil rights cases. She interned at the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, the American Civil Liberties Union, Women's Rights Project, and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York. Ms. Lisco earned her J.D. with distinction from Stanford University and her BA Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University.
Peter Lübkert is an IT professional with over 15 years of professional experience in systems design and implementation. He is Head of Division within the OECD Directorate for Information Technology and Network Services, responsible for the development and support of large IT solutions. In previous positions he managed many significant IT projects, including the development of the OECD's global information network, and was involved in policy related work. Mr. Lübkert studied Informatics at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Throughout his career he has also had various research and development assignments.
Christopher Lynn is an attorney employed by Microsoft Corporation at its European Headquarters in Paris. Among other duties, he provides Microsoft with legal counsel on issues related to technology in licensing, commercial and regulatory law. Before joining Microsoft, he practiced law in firms in Boston and Paris, and has published scholarly articles on copyright and legal ethics. Before becoming a lawyer, Mr. Lynn worked for a systems technology provider based in Chicago, Illinois. He received his education at Loyola University of Chicago, the Université de Rouen (France), and Boston College Law School.
Duncan MacDonald is General Counsel of iPrivacy, LLC (a dot-com) and serves as a privacy and online ADR specialist for American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Johns Hopkins University. In addition, he is a consultant to business organizations and a writer for various publications on privacy and data protection, ADR, bankruptcy reform, plain language writing and constitutional issues.
Prior to this, Mr. MacDonald worked at Citibank for 26 years, serving in his last position as General Counsel of Card Products, Europe & North America.
Mr. MacDonald received his AB in 1966 from the City College of New York, his J.D. in 1969 from Indiana University Law School (Bloomington), and an LLM (Corporation Law) in 1975 from New York University Law School.
William Marsh is a solicitor and Director of ADR Services at CEDR. He has successfully mediated a wide cross-section of commercial disputes, including major commercial contracts, construction, insurance/reinsurance and negligence claims, both in the UK and internationally. He has given extensive consultancy advice to a range of bodies on their use of ADR, including to HM Treasury, Department of Health, other government departments, and a number of leading insurance companies, trade associations and law firms. Mr. Marsh also trains mediators, as a member of the CEDR Training Faculty, and conducts extensive training in-house for law firms, insurance companies and others.
Before joining CEDR, he practised as a solicitor in Paris and the UK, handling international and domestic corporate and commercial matters. As Director of ADR Services at CEDR, Mr. Marsh is primarily engaged in mediating, as well as developing and running CEDR's mediation business and CEDR's management and strategic development. He has researched and written on the legal implications of ADR and has co-authored "Commercial Dispute Resolution: An ADR Practice Guide." He also lectures widely on the subject. Mr. Marsh also worked with some of the major ADR organisations in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Canada.
Erik Mickwitz is Director General of the Finnish Consumer Agency and Ombudsman, formed at the beginning of 1999. The new agency is composed of the Office of the Consumer Ombudsman and the former National Consumer Administration. A lawyer by education, Mr. Mickwitz has been working in the Office of the Consumer Ombudsman since its establishment in 1978. From 1978 to 1987, he worked there as a Head of Office, and from 1987 onwards as Consumer Ombudsman.
Maneesha Mithal has been an attorney in the Bureau of Consumer Protection's international consumer protection program at the Federal Trade Commission since May 1999. Her areas of expertise include alternative dispute resolution for online consumer transactions, Internet jurisdiction, and cross-border law enforcement. From 1995 to 1999, she was an associate at the Washington law firm of Covington & Burling, where she practiced in the commercial litigation, international litigation, and legislative areas. Ms. Mithal earned her law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center and her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University.
Jim Murray is Director of BEUC, the European Consumer Organisation, a position which he assumed in June 1990. Mr. Murray has served on many committees and advisory bodies at national, EU and international level and is currently EU Chair of the Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD).
Prior to joining BEUC, Mr. Murray was the Director of the Office of Consumer Affairs and Fair Trade in Ireland from 1979 to 1990, responsible, inter alia, for the implementation of a wide range of consumer protection and competition laws, including laws on misleading advertising, food labelling, product safety and restrictive business practices. Prior to that he was, for seven years, the Director of the Irish National Social Service Council (now the National Social Service Board), a public organisation which pioneered the development of a network of community information centres in Ireland.
Mr. Murray is a lawyer (Barrister at law) and has a degree in Physics and Mathematics. He is also the holder of a Post Graduate Diploma in European Law.
Mr. Risaburo Nezu, who is Japanese, was appointed OECD Director for Science, Technology and Industry on 21st August 1995. Before taking up this post, Mr. Nezu was the Deputy Director-General for Trade Negotiations, in the Minister's Secretariat of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in Tokyo.
He joined MITI in 1970 where he held a variety of posts at Deputy Director level in the International Trade Policy Bureau and the Industrial Policy Bureau. In 1983, Mr. Nezu was appointed Director of the International Trade Research Division, of the International Trade Policy Bureau.
From 1984 until 1987, he held the position of First Secretary at the Permanent Delegation of Japan to the OECD, in Paris. Returning to Tokyo, he then became Director for Planning of Basic Technology for Future Industries within the Agency for Industry, Science and Technology. He subsequently worked as Director of the International Business Affairs Division and Director of the Office for the Promotion of Foreign Investment in Japan, of the Industrial Policy Bureau. In 1990, Mr. Nezu was Director of the Iron and Steel Administration Division of the Basic Industries Bureau. Returning to France in 1991, he served as Counsellor in charge of the Trade Committee, the Industry Committee and the Economic Policy Committee for the Permanent Delegation of Japan to the OECD, until 1993.
Mr. Nezu has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a degree in Economics from the University of Tokyo.
Odile Nicolas-Etienne has been the Director of the Legal Department of the Union Fédérale des Consommateurs (UFC) since 1994. She is responsible for drafting policy positions of UFC on a wide range of issues related to consumer interests, including health, nutrition, justice, environment and new technologies. She represents UFC and promotes its objectives by working with Parliament, ministries, the European Commission and other public and private institutions. In addition, Ms. Nicolas-Etienne manages the legal proceedings instituted by the association in the collective interests of consumers. UFC has more than 80 cases currently pending before the courts.
From 1992 to 1994, Ms. Nicolas-Etienne was a barrister working in the areas of contract, family, criminal and social law. She holds a degree in private law from Paris II - Panthéon-Assas and an LLM from the University of Reading.
Jytte Ølgaard is a Division Head at the Danish National Consumer Agency, which she joined in 1995. Since 1996, she has been the Chair of the OECD's Committee on Consumer Policy and has also served as a Vice-Chair for the OECD's Tourism Committee.
Prior to joining the Danish National Consumer Agency, Ms. Ølgaard was employed at the Ministry of Business and Industry for more than 25 years -- with a leave of absence for two years where she was employed as a credit analyst in the international division of Mercantile Bank, St. Louis, Missouri.
A lawyer by profession, she has been engaged in a number of different policy areas such as stock exchange legislation, insurance law, book keeping regulation, tourism, and business regulation. She has chaired numerous committees to prepare legislation for Parliament and has worked on EU Directives and legislation. Ms. Ølgaard is a graduate of the law school at Universtity of Copenhagen.
Constanze Picking has been Senior Manager for Trade and E-Business at DaimlerChrysler since 1999 where she has responsibility for establishing and maintaining contacts with European institutions and international organisations (including OECD, WTO, UN/ECE, NATO, EBRD and EIB), diplomatic missions, industry associations and other interests groups. In addition, she monitors and analyses regulatory aspects of e-commerce and participates in DaimlerChrysler's strategic development on EU-related issues.
Before joining DaimlerChrysler, Ms. Picking worked for the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), the College of Europe's Poland Branch and the Central European University in Prague. She holds a Master of Advanced European Economic Studies from the College of Europe, Bruges and an MA in political science from Ludwig-Maximilian University.
Ron Plesser is a partner with the law firm of Piper Marbury Rudnick & Wolfe LLP, Washington, D.C. He a graduate of the George Washington University with a degree in English Literature and Law. In 1972, Mr. Plesser joined the Center for Study of Responsive Law and was primarily responsible for litigation and legislative activities concerning the Freedom of Information Act. In 1975, Mr. Plesser served as General Counsel to the U.S. Privacy Protection Study Commission. Mr. Plesser is past-Chair of the Individual Rights and Responsibilities Section of the American Bar Association. He has been an adjunct professor of law at George Washington University (1982-86). He also was Deputy Director of the Science, Space and Technology Cluster of the 1992 Clinton-Gore Transition.
In his current position, Mr. Plesser specializes in issues that concern international communications, Internet law, legislative matters, telecommunications, privacy, data base companies, publishers, information and software providers and users, marketers and other companies affected by the emergence of new information technologies. This includes matters of wireless and terrestrial communications issues. Clients including trade associations and individual companies are represented before the United States Congress, federal agencies and all federal and state courts. Mr. Plesser has also represented clients in world regulatory organizations.
Becky Richards is the Director of Compliance and Policy for TRUSTe, the Internet industry's leading privacy seal program. She oversees all aspects of enforcement operations and policy developments for the TRUSTe program. Directing TRUSTe's compliance operations, Ms. Richards oversees the TRUSTe WatchDog dispute resolution process, which allows Web users to turn to TRUSTe for resolution of their privacy related disputes. Since the organization's launch in 1997, the TRUSTe WatchDog mechanism has resolved thousands of consumer disputes. As TRUSTe's key public affairs liaison, Richards participates in Washington's Internet policy discussion, working closely with businesses, lawmakers and privacy advocates to better guide policy development.
Prior to joining TRUSTe, Ms. Richards was an International Trade Specialist in the Department of Commerce's Electronic Commerce Task Force. During her tenure there, she helped negotiators successfully conclude the landmark safe harbor privacy accord between the United States and the European Union. Before joining the Department of Commerce, she worked for a wholesale distribution company in the Northeast U.S. in various management positions. Ms. Richards holds a BA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a MBA/MA in International Business and Trade Policy from George Washington University.
Colin Rule, co-founder and CEO of Online Resolution, was formerly with the National Institute for Dispute Resolution in Washington, D.C. and the Consensus Building Institute in Cambridge, MA. Colin holds a Master's degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in conflict resolution and technology, and he is co-author of a forthcoming book on Online Dispute Resolution to be published in 2001 by Jossey-Bass. Colin is the former General Manager of the Mediation Information and Resource Center (MIRC), whose Web site can be found at www.mediate.com .
Currently, Herwig Schlögl is Deputy Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). He joined the OECD on 1 July 1998.
Prior to taking up his duties at OECD, Mr. Schlögl was the Deputy Director General for Trade Policy in the German Ministry of Economics, Bonn. 59-year-old Mr. Schlögl has thirty years of government experience in trade, competition and industrial policy issues.
After studying law and economics at Marburg University, Mr. Schlögl received a PhD in economics in 1969. He became a member of the German Permanent Representation at the European Economic Union in Brussels working on European monetary issues and the internal market.
In 1972, Mr. Schlögl joined the industrial policy department of the German Ministry of Economics. Four years later he took leave of absence to become Chief Economist of the German-American Chamber of Commerce in New York. He returned to the Economics Ministry in 1980 to become head of the foreign economic affairs division in the industry department, dealing mainly with Eastern European countries and the former Soviet Union.
From 1984 to 1996, Mr. Schlögl headed the Division for Foreign Economic Policy and Export Promotion in the German Economics Ministry. He was also in charge of G7 Summit co-ordination for the Ministry of Economics and overall OECD co-ordination in the German government. From 1996 he was Deputy Director-General for Trade Policy. In that capacity he served also as Head of Delegation to regular bilateral economic consultations with the US, Latin American and Asian governments. He is the author of books and articles on competition policy and on trade policy issues.
Naoshi Shima was born in Tokyo. After graduating from Electronic Engineering Department of Tokyo University, he joined NEC Corporation.
He has been working in the overlapping area of computers and communications even before NEC adopted the C&C concept in 1977. In the 1970's, he focused on the development of NEC's Network Architecture DINA and represented Japan in the meetings of ISO/TC97/ SC16 when the ISO seven-layered model was defined. In the 1980s, he acted as a member of IEEE.802 for the Local Area Network standards. Since 1985, the year of Japan's telecommunication deregulation, he worked for the inauguration of C&C-VAN, NEC's Value Added Network, and the creation of BIGLOBE, one of the largest Internet service providers in Japan. Since the establishment of Global Business Dialogue on Electronic Commerce (GBDe) in 1998, Mr. Shima has been a sherpa to the member representing NEC. He worked as the discussion leader of the Authentication and Security Working Group when NEC took the chair of this Working Group in 1999 and the Asian/Oceanian Contact Point of ADR Working Group in 2000. Currently he is Vice President, Internet Business Development of NEC Corporation and a member of IEICJ, IPSJ, JSICR, IEEE and ACM.
Petra Spring-Reiman has been an administrator in the Directorate General for Internal Markets at the European Commission since early 1999, where she is involved in establishing a cross-border network of national out-of-court dispute settlement bodies for financial services. She joined the European Commission in 1998, where she served in the Legal Affairs Unit of DG XI -- Environment, Nuclear Safety and Civil Protection. Prior to this, she was an assistant in Jurisprudence and Legal History at Helsinki University Faculty of Law from 1996 to 1997.
Ms. Spring-Reiman holds a Master of Laws from Helsinki University (Laudatur) and a Licentiate in Laws from Helsinki University (Eximia cum laude appropatur).
Hugh Stevenson is Associate Director for the Division of Planning & Information in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Bureau of Consumer Protection. The Division coordinates the FTC's international consumer protection program. The Division is also responsible for handling more than 40,000 consumer complaints and inquiries a month on a variety of subjects. Mr. Stevenson has worked at the FTC since 1991.
Louise Sylvan is the President of Consumers International and the Chief Executive of the Australian Consumers' Association (ACA). The ACA is the publisher of CHOICE magazine and hosts the Web site CHOICE Online. The ACA also advocates vigorously for the protection of consumer rights and helps to create a stong voice for consumers in Australia.
An active member and worker in the consumer movement nationally and internationally for over 15 years, Ms. Sylvan is well known for her work in enhancing consumer rights in health, on food issues, financial services, as well as in competition and consumer policy; in addition, she recently has been working on consumer issues in electronic commerce.
She has advised governments in a variety of areas over the years including serving for six years on the Australian Prime Minister's Economic Planning Advisory Council and many years on the Federal Minister's Consumer Advisory Council on Consumer Affairs. She represented Consumers International in the development of the OECD Guidelines on Consumer Protection in the Context of Electronic Commerce and currently serves on the Australian Government's Expert Group in Electronic Commerce.
Ms. Sylvan has a BA and MPA from universities in her original homeland of Canada and immigrated to Australia in 1983.
Alastair Tempest was appointed Director General of the Federation of European Direct Marketing (FEDMA) in 1999. He had been Director General for public affairs and self-regulation at FEDMA since the inception of the federation in April 1997.
He has made his career in European public affairs strategy and commercial communications policy. Prior to his work at FEDMA, Mr. Tempest was Director General of the European Advertising Tripartite (an umbrella grouping of advertisers, advertising agencies, and the media) and was also director of external affairs for the European Association of Advertising Agencies.
Mr. Tempest studied at the universities of York and Sheffield in the United Kingdom and has a master's degree in European economic studies from the College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium. He is a board member of the European Advertising Tripartite and vice-chairman of the Electronic Commerce Europe Association. He also serves on the editorial boards of many international advertising and marketing publications, including the International Journal of Advertising and the International Journal of Direct Marketing Strategy.
Mozelle Thompson was sworn in as a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission in 1997. He currently leads the U.S. delegation to the OECD's Committee on Consumer Policy where he also serves as Vice Chair. Mr. Thompson is also President of the International Marketing Supervision Network (IMSN), an association of international consumer protection enforcement agencies.
Prior to his service as Commissioner, Mr. Thompson was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury where he was responsible for overseeing domestic spending and credit policies, including the operations of the Federal Financing Bank and the Office of Government Financing. Before joining federal government, he served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel to the New York State Finance Agency. Mr. Thompson was also an attorney with the New York firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom.
Mr. Thompson is a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia Law School. He holds an MPA from Princeton University.
Vincent Tilman is a researcher at the Research Centre for Computer and Law (CRID) at the University of Namur ( http://www.droit.fundp.ac.be/crid ). There, he co-ordinates the ECODIR (Electronic Consumer Dispute Resolution) project, subsidised by the European Union. He conducts research on information technology law and has published and participated in various conferencess, speaking on this issue. His areas of specialty include mediation, arbitration and Internet self-regulation issues, such as codes of conduct, labellisation and ADR.
He also participates in the IST Project ECLIP - Electronic Commerce Legal Issues Platform ( http://www.eclip.org/ ). Mr. Tilman holds a degree in law and a Master's in Specialised Studies in communication and information technology, law and management
Toh See Kiat is a senior partner at the Singapore law firm of Tan Peng Chin & Partners and Associate Professor at the Nanyang Technology University (currently on leave). He heads the Intellectual Property, Information Technology and Internet Law Department of the law firm. His practice also includes banking, corporate, commercial and electronic commerce law.
He is the author of Paperless International Trade: Law of Telematic Data Interchange (Butterworths Asia, 1992) and a member of the international advisory panel of e-Business World (International Chamber of Commerce). Dr. Toh is heavily involved in IT law reform and policy and standards setting in electronic commerce; advises several government linked companies and "dot com" companies on IT and e-commerce issues; and advises the Dubai Internet City on law reform for e-commerce.
Dr. Toh is also a Singapore Member of Parliament, and sits on the Government Parliamentary Committee on Communications and Information Technology. At the same time, he is a member of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the Asia Pacific Council for the Facilitation of Trade and Electronic Business (AFACT) and 150 working groups on issues relating to e-commerce. Dr. Toh is also an entrepreneur with interests in several "dot-coms" and serves as Chairman of CommerceNet Singapore Limited (part of a global consortium of e-commerce companies).
Dr. Toh received an LLB (Hons) from the National University of Singapore in 1982, an LLM from Harvard University in 1986 and a Ph.D. in Law from the University of London in 1991. He is an accredited member of the Singapore Mediation Centre.
Carina Törnblom is Head of the Legal, Economic and other Consumers' Interests Unit, Health and Consumer Protection DG, at the European Commission. Prior to joining the Commission she was Director of Consumer Policy in the Swedish Government (1995-99), Head of the Consumer Rights Division at the Financial Supervisory Authority in Sweden (1990-95) and a Legal Adviser at the Consumer Agency/Consumer Ombudsmans Office in Sweden (1985-90).
Arie van Bellen is Managing Director of the Electronic Commerce Platform Nederlands (ECP.NL). ECP.NL is a Dutch not-for-profit association of 190 members including users and providers of e-commerce, government, intermediary organisations and universities. He is head of delegation of the Netherlands in several international bodies and ad-hoc advisor of the Dutch Government regarding electronic commerce.
Mr. van Bellen heads a staff of fifteen people working together with ECP.NL-member expert groups on awareness, trust, standards, education, international affairs and pilot projects on electronic commerce. During 2000, ECP.NL focused on such issues as purchasing, co-regulation, ADR, mobile commerce, and XML. He regularly presents statements and visions on e-commerce through speeches and papers and is chairman or member of several national committees on aspects of the digital economy.
Johannes Hendrik Albert (Hans) van Loon was born in 1948 in Utrecht, Netherlands. He studied at the Universities of Utrecht (Master of Laws 1971) and Leyden, and at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva. He was a trainee with the European Commission of Human Rights, Strasbourg in 1973. From 1974 to 1979, he practised law in The Hague and was the Secretary (from 1978), First Secretary (from 1988) to the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law. Mr van Loon has been Secretary General of the Hague Conference on Private International Law since 1996.
From 1978 to 1996, he was Secretary of the Netherlands Standing Government Committee for the Codification of Private International Law, and as such was responsible, with the Chair, for the co-ordination of the Committee's advisory task regarding the proposed codification of Dutch private international law. Mr van Loon has held a number of other positions, including: Secretary of the Netherlands Association for International Law, the Netherlands Branch of the International Law Association (ila) (1977-92); Member of the Board of the Internationaal Juridisch Instituut at The Hague (since 1982); Substitute judge in the Arrondissementsrechtbank (District Court) at The Hague (1984-96); Member of the Board of the Netherlands branch of International Social Service (1985-94); Member of the Council of International Social Service, Geneva (since 1986); Correspondent of the Netherlands International Law Review (since 1986); Member of the Review Committee for international law of the Netherlands Foundation for Research and Law (1987-92); and Visiting Professor, University of Florida, Gainesville (Fall 1988).
Mr van Loon was the co-drafter of the Earth Covenant, a prototype and precursor to the Earth Charter (New York 1989), and of the Declaration on Human Responsibilities for Peace and Sustainable Development (UN GA A/44/626; 1989, San José, Costa Rica). He has provided expert consultancy to the governments of Costa Rica, Romania and Albania, to unicef and unhcr (with respect to former Yugoslavia), and to the Parliament of Paraguay.
In addition, Mr van Loon has been Director of Studies, first period, Hague Academy of International Law (Summer 1989), and taught lectures and seminars on private international law at the Hague Academy of International Law. Since 1990, he has been a Member of the Scientific Board of "Molengrafica" (annual periodical of the Law Faculty of the University of Utrecht) and has been a Member of the European Group on Private International Law since 1991. He has been a Member of the "Prof. Mr J. Offerhaus" study group since 1992, and Secretary and Treasurer of the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Private International Law Research since 1992.
Barbara Wellbery is a partner in the financial services and telecommunications practices in the law firm of Morrison & Foerster LLP, Washington, D.C. office. Ms. Wellbery's practice focuses on a broad range of electronic commerce, telecommunications, and information technology issues, including privacy, consumer protection, jurisdiction, alternative dispute resolution, and intellectual property, with an emphasis on e-commerce policy development and the cross-border activities of financial services, telecommunications, and technology companies. Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Wellbery served as Counsellor to the Under Secretary for Electronic Commerce at the U.S. Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration. Ms. Wellbery was chief architect and principal negotiator of the safe harbor privacy accord with the European Union, and also had primary responsibility for formulating and implementing a wide variety of electronic commerce and information technology policies. In addition, she served as the lead U.S. negotiator on numerous electronic commerce issues in international and regional multilateral organizations, such as the OECD, the Free Trade Agreement of the Americans, and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
From 1994 to 1997, Ms. Wellbery served as Chief Counsel of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (Department of Commerce). Before joining the Department of Commerce, Ms. Wellbery was Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Legal and Business Affairs at Discovery Communications, Inc. Prior to Discovery Communications, Inc., Ms. Wellbery served as Deputy General Counsel and Director of Copyright at the Public Broadcasting Service.
Ms. Wellbery is the Vice Chair of the Electronic Commerce Subcommittee of the American Bar Association's International Business Transactions Committee and was Vice Chair of the Privacy and the Consumer Protection Groups of the American Bar Association's Project on Transnational Jurisdiction in Cyberspace. She received her B.A. from S.U.N.Y. Binghamton in 1969 and her J.D. from Stanford University.
Erik Wilbers, a national of The Netherlands (1958), is Senior Counsellor at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Center, in Geneva. Following studies in the United States and The Netherlands, Mr. Wilbers was a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property Law in Munich. Before joining WIPO in 1996, he practiced with the law firm of Clifford Chance in Amsterdam, was on the legal staff of the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague, and headed a division of the Compensation Commission of the United Nations Security Council dealing with claims arising from the Gulf War. His present area of work includes the management of Internet domain name cases filed with the WIPO Center. Mr. Wilbers is also involved in the development of on-line case systems and other methods aimed at increasing the efficiency of dispute resolution. He has written and spoken on a variety of legal subjects, including arbitration and intellectual property.
Marc Wilikens is Scientific Officer at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and heads up the research group on trust and confidence in e-commerce and dependability of IT systems. He is currently leading a project to develop a technology demonstrator platform for
ADR systems. Mr. Wilikens is the co-author of the JRC study on "Out-of-Court Dispute Settlement Systems for E-commerce," with special interest in the relevant technological issues. In addition, he was the co-organiser of the European Commission's ADR workshop, held in Brussels in March, 2000.
Yuko Yasunaga graduated from Tokyo University Graduate School of Engineering in 1986 with a Master's degree in Resource Development Engineering. In 1986, he joined MITI/Japan. After graduating from the Colorado School of Mines with a Master's degree in mineral economics, he served as Deputy Director, International Affairs Division, Agency of Natural Resources and Energy at MITI. There, he was in charge of observations of the international oil market. In 1995, he was appointed Deputy Director, Industrial Electronics Division, MITI where he focused on the semiconductor industry. He served also as Deputy Director, Southeast Asia-Pacific Division, MITI from 1997 to 1999. Since 1999, Mr. Yasunaga has been Deputy Director, Commerce Policy Division, MITI, in charge of consumer protection for B2C e-comm
