Eyes On Trade Author Biographies

Jessa Boehner is Global Trade Watch’s Legislative Assistant and Scheduler. Previously, she coordinated a bilingual educational enrichment program in her hometown of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. As an undergraduate intern at Global Trade Watch, she had the opportunity to star in a video highlighting the issue of tax havens in Panama that was featured on the front page of the Huffington Post. Jessa has also volunteered with Fundacion Origen, an organization working in solidarity with the indigenous population in Puebla, Mexico. She earned a B.A. in International Studies and a minor in the Spanish language from American University.

Brooke Harper-Patterson is Senior Field Organizer for Global Trade Watch and oversees its national campaigns grassroots outreach. Prior to joining Global Trade Watch, she was the National Field Organizer for Jubilee USA Network where she organized for expanded debt cancellation and international financial institution reforms. She also worked for Moveon.org on their clean energy and healthcare campaigns and campaigned with Obama for America in 12 states. She has also worked on political and anti-war campaigns.

Arden Manning is Press Officer for Global Trade Watch and serves as the main point of contact for media inquiries. Prior to joining Global Trade Watch, Mr. Manning served as executive director of the Maine Democratic Party as well as the campaign manager of Maine Democrat’s coordinated campaign effort in 2010. Manning acted as the spokesperson and communications strategist for the state party for four years as well as the spokesperson for the 2010 campaign. Earlier in his career, he worked as communications director for the Maine Democratic Party. He also ran a clean energy campaign for Environment Maine during the summer of 2005 and spent the 2004 presidential election in Boulder Colorado as a field organizer for Grassroots Campaigns. Mr. Manning is from the State of Maine but has lived and worked in various parts of the U.S. as well as in Paris, France. He received a B.A. from the University of Southern Maine in Classical Languages and History and a M.A. in International Relations and Conflict Resolution from the American University in Paris.

Peter Maybarduk is Access to Medicines Program Director at Public Citizen. In this role he advises governments and civil society groups around the world on their rights to promote universal access to medicines under intellectual property rules. This year Peter's work with partners yielded major HIV/AIDS drug price reductions in Colombia and new state access to medicines policies in Ecuador. Peter's current work focuses in part on protecting competition and access under trade agreements and intellectual property enforcement policies, and on appropriate policy responses to criminally adulterated or falsified medicines. Peter has co-founded and coordinated several volunteer-run advocacy and assistance groups, including International Professional Partnerships for Sierra Leone (IPPSL), dedicated to supporting public sector development in one of the world's least developed countries. Peter studied law at the University of California at Berkeley and anthropology at the College of William and Mary.

Melinda St. Louis is International Campaigns Director with Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, where she works with international allies to roll-back WTO financial deregulation and to stop expansion of harmful trade agreements. Before joining Global Trade Watch, Ms. St. Louis was director of policy and campaigns for Jubilee USA Network, an alliance of 75 organizations dedicated to ending the cycle of crippling debts Africa, Asia, and Latin America. She is the former executive director of Witness for Peace, a national grassroots organization that supports peace, justice and sustainable economies in Latin America and the Caribbean by challenging harmful U.S. military and economic policies in the region. As mid-Atlantic organizer for the Campaign for Labor Rights, she mobilized consumer campaigns in support of workers’ struggles in sweatshops across the globe. Ms. St. Louis has lived and worked in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and currently serves on the boards of the Latin America Working Group and Witness for Peace. She received a M.P.P. in International Policy and Development from Georgetown University.

Kate Titus is Deputy Director for Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. Before joining Global Trade Watch, Ms. Titus worked for many years in the field of community and labor organizing, focusing on local, state, national, and international issues related to economic and racial justice. Prior to joining the Global Trade Watch staff, Ms. Titus worked on the national field staff for the Change to Win labor federation. She is the former executive director of Oregon Action, a statewide grassroots membership organization that serves as the voice of democracy for people on the downside of power in Oregon. In this capacity, she worked on the boards of the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations and USAction. She also served on Jobs with Justice's workers rights board in Portland, Oregon. Ms. Titus has lived and worked in several parts of the United States, as well as Latin America and Eastern Europe. She received a M.A. in Public Administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Todd Tucker is research director with Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, based in Washington, DC. His work focuses on the legal, economic and political implications of the WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA and other trade agreements, and also on U.S. foreign policy issues.

Tucker is a frequent media commentator on international economic and policy issues who has been cited and published by radio, print and Internet outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Nation magazine, Foreign Policy in Focus, and others.

He is originally from Louisville, Kentucky, by way of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Prior to joining Global Trade Watch, Tucker served as a policy analyst at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC.

Lori Wallach is the director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. A Harvard-trained lawyer, Wallach has promoted the public interest regarding globalization and international commercial agreements in every forum: Congress and foreign parliaments, the courts, government agencies, and the media. Described as "Ralph Nader with a sense of humor" in a Wall Street Journal profile, "the Trade Debate's Guerrilla Warrior" in the National Journal, and "Madame Defarge of Seattle" by the Institute for International Economics, Wallach has testified on NAFTA, GATT-WTO, and other trade issues before over 30 U.S. congressional committees, numerous other countries’ legislatures, the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Wallach’s work in "translating" arcane trade legalese – indeed, entire proposed international commercial agreements – into relevant, accessible prose has had significant national and international impact.

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