TEAM
Dr. Kati Suominen is Founder and CEO of Nextrade Group and has ideated and led all Nextrade Group engagements with the company's more than 40 clients. She ideates and develops actionable data, rigorous AI-driven analytics, and public-private partnerships to enable trade through technology.
Suominen is a global thought leader in trade, development, and digitization. She has published over 100 articles and her 10th book, Revolutionizing World Trade: How Disruptive Technologies Open Opportunities for All, was published by Stanford University Press in November 2019.
She has ideated and built seven global initiatives and PPPs involving over 30 leading technology, ecommerce, and logistics companies and numerous global agencies, such as eTrade for All now championed the UN and 40 agencies to drive ecommerce development, and Alliance for eTrade Development I and II with 14 leading ecommerce, technology and logistics companies and USAID to accelerate ecommerce development in developing countries. She serves as the eTrade Alliance's Technical Director.
Suominen has spoken and keynoted numerous times at such venues as Davos, World Trade Organization (WTO), World Trade Symposium, Global Trade Review, ICC Banking Commission, Institute of International Finance, IMF, and World Bank, and commented in such media as Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Time, Politico, BBC, CSPAN, USA Today, and Los Angeles Times.
She serves as Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where she founded the Digital Trade program working with such companies as eBay, Google and IBM, and as Adjunct Professor at the UCLA Anderson School, where she teaches international business economics and the economics of global digital disruption. She is Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
She has served as Resident Fellow in the Global Economics program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (2010-12), where she founded the GMF’s G20 initiative, and as Trade Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank (2003-10), where she co-led the Bank’s global trade policy research, backstopped operational teams engaging in trade promotion and facilitation projects around the Americas, and served as trade policy advisor to APEC Senior Officials. In 2017, she served as Senior Advisor to the G20-launched World SME Forum.
A trade economist, she received her PhD from University of California, San Diego, MBA from the Wharton School of Business, MA from Boston University, and BA from the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, where she played Division I tennis on a full scholarship.
BONALY PHRASAVATH
Digital Economy Analyst
Bonaly Phrasavath assists with data management, analytics, and research work across Nextrade projects, with private and public sector clients. BA, University of Nevada; MA forthcoming, University of California, San Diego.
Michael Poor manages Nextrade's development programs to enable trade through technology especially in Africa. He designs interventions and approaches with private sector partners, and leads project execution. With a background in working with leading financial services firms including AIG and its corporate clients, he also brings expertise in digital payments and digital finance solutions and policies. MA, University of California, San Diego; BA, University of Colorado, Boulder.
MICHAEL POOR
Senior Manager and Financial Services Lead
Fabian Stachelin works with Nextrade team to build developing country SMEs' ecommerce capabilities and use of online global marketplaces for trade. He is also founder of founded e-traid gmbh aimed at developing cross-border ecommerce in emerging countries. A former eBay executive and consultant at the International Trade Center with over a decade of experience in ecommerce in emerging markets, Fabian has Masters degree form Graduate Institute on Geneva and is fluent in English, German and French.
FABIAN STACHELIN
Ecommerce Development Lead
Bassil Eid builds developing country SMEs' ecommerce capabilities and use of online global marketplaces for trade, in the MENA region in particular. He is co-founder of a number of startups in logistics and finance, and has served in senior executive roles at DHL Express and DHL Freight , as well as at eBay where he was head of U.S. Exports. He also invests in logistics startups. Bassil has MBA from from the University of Ottawa and speaks English, French and Arabic.
BASSIL EID
Ecommerce Development Lead
Nextrade experts
Several distinguished individuals have worked and continue working with Nextrade, including:
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Jean (Jem) Marasigan is Research Associate at Harder+Company Community Research in San Diego, where she helps nonprofits access data and analytical capabilities. She is driving Nextrade data and research initiatives and geospatial analytics. MA, UC San Diego.
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Dr. Rachel Stevenson is a Head of Data Science and Analytics at Headspace Inc. in Los Angeles. She has deep expertise in supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms, and statistical methods, including time-series analysis, natural language processing, forecasting, bootstrapping, cross-validation, regression, clustering (e.g. k-means, hierarchical), and classification (e.g. logistic regression, random forest, SVM). PhD, UCLA.
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Euijin Jung is Trade Policy Analyst at World Bank and previously served as Research Analyst at Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, where she conducts empirical and policy oriented research and analysis on trade issues such as US-China trade frictions, USMCA, Korea-US FTA, Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), US-EU privacy protection, exports of US small and medium enterprises and economic sanctions. MA, US San Diego.