Trade and Customs Borders

Peter Swartz is co-founder and chief science officer at Altana AI. Altana’s mission is to power a new era of globalization defined by Trusted Networks, which span and connect governments, businesses, and civil society to shape a more resilient, secure, inclusive, and sustainable world. Peter has spoken on global trade, supply chains, and machine learning at the World Trade Organization, the World Customs Organization, the US Court of International Trade, the National Academies of Medicine, and the O’Reilly and Wolfram conferences. Previously, Peter was Head of Data Science at Panjiva (listed as one of Fast Company’s most innovative data science companies in 2018 and sold to S&P Global). He holds a number of patents in machine learning and global trade. Peter completed his undergraduate and graduate education at Yale, MIT, and the Federal Polytechnic of Lausanne (EPFL), with a focus on engineering, statistical methods, and global trade.

Loretta Landmesser is Wolf Clan from the Xwémalhkwu (Homalco) First Nation, a Coast Salish nation known as the People of the Fast-Running Waters.  She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Simon Fraser University (2002) and a Master of Arts from the University of Guelph (2004), both with a specialization in Canadian Politics. She has worked in the public service for the Canada Border Services Agency since 1999. She has held several different roles, including as a border services officer, program officer and business analyst. Loretta co-established the Agency’s Indigenous Affairs Secretariat (2018), where she now serves as the Director and leads the implementation of Shared Action Plan Measure 52 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act Action Plan, which addresses Indigenous border mobility concerns. Loretta is the proud recipient of the CBSA President’s Award (2019), received as part of the Secretariat’s contribution to the Indigenous space at the CBSA. Loretta is a strong proponent of ensuring Indigenous voices are reflected in the Indigenous affairs policy space and data-driven storytelling.

Solomon Wong is President and CEO of InterVISTAS, a global consulting firm with services in market analyses, policy development, planning and strategies related to the movement of people and goods. He has a track record on regulatory and technological change and has helped to implement solutions for a range of private/public sector clients. Results of his work have informed planning of new facilities throughout the US and Canada.

Hubert Duchesneau is a Research Fellow with BIG_Lab and a Customs Modernization Expert with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He also works in Cultural Property Protection Capability Building with the Heritage Crime Task Force of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Hubert is a former World Customs Organization (WCO) Senior Technical Officer and former Director of International Cooperation and Capacity Development with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). He has 30+ years of experience developing and implementing Customs and international trade capacity building initiatives, competency-based leadership development, and talent management frameworks.

Joel Choi is a Technical Officer and Data Analyst at the Capacity Building Directorate of the World Customs Organization (WCO).

Geoffrey Hale is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at the University of Lethbridge, where he taught from 1999 to 2021. His research interests include public policy, particularly Canada-U.S. relations, fiscal and tax policies, the political economy of trade and investment policies, North American integration, and border management and security. His current project is “Managing Canadian Federalism Through the Pandemic.”

Alan Bersin is on the the Chairman of the Advisory Board at Altana AI. He has held numerous high-level positions at the federal, state, and local levels of government. Most recently, after serving as the Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Bersin served as the Assistant Secretary for Policy and Chief Diplomatic Officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Previously, he was Secretary of Education in California, the Superintendent of Public Education in San Diego, and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California and the Attorney General’s Southwest Border Representative at the Department of Justice. He also served as Vice President for the Americas and on the Executive Committee of INTERPOL Bersin is the Inaugural North American Fellow at the Wilson Center, a Senior Fellow with the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and the Executive Chairman of Altana Technologies.

Frédérique Berrod has been a professor at the Strasbourg Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po Strasbourg) at the University of Strasbourg since September 2008. She was a lecturer at the Institute of Advanced European Studies in Strasbourg (2006–2008) and at the Faculty of Economic, Social and Legal Sciences of the University of Haute-Alsace (2002–2006). She specializes in teaching European Union law, including EU institutional law, internal market law, competition law, border law, energy law, health product law, digital internal market, and data law in Europe.

Jenia Peteva is a Policy Officer in Revenue Administration at the European Commission. She contributes to the improvement of the efficiency and the digital transformation of the customs and tax administrations of the member states of the European Union. Previously, Jenia was a member of the Secretariat of the Information and Management Steering Board of the EUC, where she was involved in shaping the data governance and knowledge management policy at the EUC.

Cameron Walter is the current Head of the Heritage Crime Task Force of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). He is the former Lead of International Relations for Europe, Africa and Middle East with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), where he focused on supply chain security, counter-terrorism, customs intelligence and trade facilitation. Cameron has participated in numerous operations with WCO targeting heritage trafficking networks. He transferred in 2017 to Canadian Heritage as the Deputy Director of International Partnerships, where he coordinated efforts to expand Canada’s global creative industries trade while also building international partnerships to combat trafficking of cultural property.

Kathrine Richardson is an urban and economic geographer and a Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at San José State University. Her research specializes in the mobility and retention of the internationally highly skilled, and how highly skilled foreigner professionals may influence the growth and change of urban systems. Specifically, Professor Richardson’s work focuses on transnational migrations of highly-skilled immigrants between the Americas and Asia-Pacific. Her book, Knowledge Borders: Temporary Labor Mobility and the Canada-US Border Region, examines the movement of high technology and biotechnology professionals across the Canada–U.S. border under Chapter 16 of NAFTA (now USMCA) in a post 9/11 environment within the binational region of Cascadia, which includes British Columbia, Washington state, Oregon, and portions of Northern California. In addition to academic publications, Dr. Richardson conducted an important study on the mobility and settlement of highly-skilled North Americans across the Canada–U.S. border under NAFTA (now USMCA) for the executive branch of the Government of Canada.

Ricardo Treviño Chapa is the Deputy Secretary General of the World Customs Organization (WCO) and the former Head of Mexican Customs. During his career in the public sector, spanning over seventeen years, he also served as Director General of Mexico’s Social Security Institute, where he spearheaded the latest reform to strengthen the Institute’s revenue collection, as Director General for Revenue Collection in the Mexican Government, and in the Institute for Protection of Bank Savings in areas such as process improvement, financial support analysis and asset management.

With more than 24 years’ experience in customs and trade policy and law enforcement, Janine Harker brings an integrated perspective to the challenges facing traders and governments involved in the cross-border movement of goods. She currently serves as the President of the Canadian Society of Customs Brokers (CSCB) and advocates for consistent and transparent regulations and processes to govern the import and export of goods. Janine has represented the Government of Canada on customs, intelligence and national security issues as both a diplomat and on committees at the World Customs Organization, the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Wassenaar Arrangement, and other international organizations.