On Thursday, October 7, we welcomed members of the Board and Advisory Council of Listening for America, as they presented key findings of their report on the views of Americans about international trade and globalization. Since 2018, Listening for America has engaged a diverse cross-section of Americans in informal conversations and focus groups to discuss their experiences with international trade and globalization. Panelists shared key findings of the report and discussed ways in which policy makers can most effectively address the needs of communities in today’s globalized economy.
WITA Webinar Featuring:
Ambassador Peter Allgeier, President, Nauset Global LLC; former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative
Kira Alvarez, Vice President, ViacomCBS
Catherine A. Novelli, President, Listening for America; Senior Advisor, Shearwater Global
Bruce Stokes, Executive Director Transatlantic Task Force and non-resident fellow, German Marshall Fund of the United States
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Ambassador Peter Allgeier has over forty years of experience in negotiating international trade and investment issues, in both government and the private sector. At the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, he served as the Deputy USTR and as U.S. Ambassador to the World Trade Organization (WTO), also serving twice (2005, 2009) as Acting US Trade Representative. Before his appointment as Deputy USTR, he served in a series of senior negotiating positions covering Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Western Hemisphere.
From 2012-2016, Ambassador Allgeier served as President of the Coalition of Service Industries (CSI), representing the international trade and investment interests of the American service economy. including major international companies from the banking, insurance, telecommunications, information technology, express delivery, audiovisual, energy services, and other service industries. Prior to his leadership of CSI, he served as President of C&M International, a trade consulting firm based in Washington, DC.
He is the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the Washington International Trade Association (WITA) and the Woodrow Wilson Distinguished Alumnus Award from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
He has a Ph.D. in International Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University, and an A.B. in International Relations from Brown University.
Kira Alvarez is Vice President of Government Relations at ViacomCBS. Before joining Viacom CBS, Ms. Alvarez served as Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Intellectual Property and Chief Negotiator for IP Enforcement, in the Obama administration, responsible for bilateral IP negotiations between the US and China, and served as the U.S. co-chair of the IP Committee of the US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT). She negotiated the IP chapters of several US Free Trade Agreements, including those with Chile, Central America (CAFTA) and Morocco. Ms. Alvarez is on the Board of Directors of Listening for America, and helped conduct the listening sessions that are the basis for the group’s report and recommendations. Ms. Alvarez’s work in the private sector includes representing the American Bar Association’s Section of Intellectual Property Rights, and she has also worked for AbbVie, Time Warner and Eli Lilly.
Ms. Alvarez was born and raised bilingual in Miami’s Little Havana. She has a Juris Doctor and Master of Science in Foreign Service (JD/MSFS) from Georgetown University and Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College, where she was Editor in Chief of the Harvard International Review.
Catherine A. Novelli is the President of Listening for America, a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to forging a new vision of U.S. international trade engagement. She is a Fellow at the Center for New American Security and a Senior Advisor to Shearwater Global. She is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. She previously served as Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment (2014-2017) where she promoted economic reform and open markets for U.S. products and services. As Under Secretary, Ambassador Novelli spearheaded the first-of- its-kind Our Ocean movement, which, during her tenure, resulted in $10 billion for Ocean conservation and has become a continuing global effort. She also launched the Global Connect Initiative, an innovative partnership with governments, multilateral development banks and the private sector to connect 1.5 billion people to the Internet.
Novelli spent seven years as Vice President, Worldwide Government Affairs at Apple Inc where she headed a multinational international team responsible for Apple’s government relations and public policy. Prior to her position at Apple, she was a partner in the law firm of Mayer Brown International. She had a long career at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, rising to Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Europe & the Mediterranean, where she coordinated U.S. trade and investment policy for Europe, Russia, Central Asia, the Middle East and Northern Africa. She took a leading role in many of the most important U.S. trade negotiations in those regions, including free trade agreements with Jordan, Morocco and Bahrain, and Oman. As the Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia, she negotiated most of the bilateral trade and investment agreements that underpin our economic relationship in that region.
Novelli currently serves on the Boards of the National Wildlife Federation, the Northern Virginia Community College and the Advisory Board of the Pristine Seas Initiative of the National Geographic Society. She was also named an Ocean Elder.
Novelli has received numerous honors and awards, including the State Department Distinguished Service Award and the International Trade Woman of the Year Award. She is a graduate of Tufts University, holds a law degree from the University of Michigan and a Master of Laws from University of London.
Bruce Stokes is Executive Director Transatlantic Task Force and non-resident fellow, German Marshall Fund of the United States. Previously, he was the director of Global Economic Attitudes at the Pew Research Center in Washington, DC, where he helped create and author Pew’s annual global attitudes survey. He is a former international economics correspondent for the National Journal, a Washington-based public policy magazine. He is also a former senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is a member, and is currently an associate fellow at Chatham House.
He is co-author of the book America Against the World: How We Are Different and Why We Are Disliked (Times Books, 2006), and author of numerous German Marshall Fund and Council on Foreign Relations studies.
Stokes is a graduate of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.