As WTO Members prepare for the 14th Ministerial Conference (MC14) in Cameroon this March, WITA International launched a new global webinar series: WTO Matters. The series will explore the core functions of the WTO, reforms needed to keep the institution effective and relevant, and the key policy issues shaping debates.

The series kicked off on December 16 with a high-level discussion on the state of the multilateral trading system, the role of the WTO in today’s global economy, and key issues Members are considering as they look towards the future of the global trading system.

Featured Speakers:

Angela Ellard, Senior Fellow (non-resident), Center for Strategic and International Studies; former Deputy Director General, World Trade Organization

Ignacio Garcia Bercero, Senior Fellow, Bruegel; former Director, Directorate for Trade at the European Commission

Jennifer Hillman, Co-Director, Institute of International Economic Law, Georgetown University Law Center; former Member, WTO Appellate Body; former Chair, U.S. International Trade Commission

Jonathan Fried, Senior Advisor (non-resident), Albright Stonebridge Group; Chair, Canadian National Committee of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council; Former Ambassador and Permanent Representative, Permanent Mission of Canada to the WTO

Moderator: Dawn Shackleford, President at Looking Glass Trade, LLC; former Executive Director for Trade Agreements Policy & Negotiations, Department of Commerce; former Assistant USTR for WTO & Multilateral Affairs

Speaker Biographies

Angela Paolini Ellard is renowned for her expertise in trade and international economic policy, resolving trade barriers, negotiating outcomes, and building coalitions.

She is Senior Fellow (non-resident) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC.

Ms. Ellard served as Deputy Director-General of the World Trade Organization from June 2021 to August 2025. During her tenure, she was responsible for dispute settlement/reform, trade remedies, market access/trade facilitation, and negotiations to curb harmful fisheries subsidies. As a diplomat and key member of the senior leadership team, she supervised the Secretariat’s facilitation of the successful conclusion and entry into force of the Fisheries Subsidies Agreement. She also oversaw the WTO budget and financial operations, providing transparency and accountability as well as sound fiscal management.

Previously, Ms. Ellard had a distinguished 26-year career as Majority and Minority Chief Trade Counsel in the U.S. Congress. She achieved significant bipartisan trade policy outcomes with Congressional leaders and five Presidential administrations, including trade agreement negotiation and implementation, development programs, and U.S. trade and customs laws. Before her tenure on the Hill, she practiced law at major U.S.law firms, focusing on trade litigation, policy, and legislation.

She earned her J.D. cum laude/Tulane Law School, M.A. in Public Policy/Tulane University, and B.A. summa cum laude/Tulane’s Newcomb College.

She speaks and lectures worldwide and has received numerous awards for her leadership and contributions to trade law and policy.

Ignacio García Bercero is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel.

Active at the European Commission since 1987, he participated in the Uruguay Round negotiations and was subsequently posted in the EU Delegation to the United Nations in New York. Upon his return to Brussels he worked in the preparation of what eventually became the Doha Development agenda and was head of unit for legal affairs and WTO dispute settlement.

From 2005 until 2011 he was Director responsible for the areas of Sustainable Development, Bilateral Trade Relations (South Asia, South-East Asia, Korea, Russia and ex-CIS countries, EuroMed and the Middle East). He was also the Chief Negotiator for the EU-Korea and EU-India Free Trade Agreements. From 2012 he was responsible for overseeing EU activities in the field of Neighbouring countries, US and Canada and was Chief negotiator for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

Ignacio has written several papers and publications on WTO matters, including WTO reform, Dispute Settlement, Competition Policy and Regulatory Cooperation

In 2020 he completed a Fellowship at Saint Anthony’s College Oxford where his research focused on WTO reform. Since 2021 he is Visiting Professor in the Department of Political Science of the University College London and Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE Ideas, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Ignacio holds a Law Degree from the Law Faculty of Universidad Complutense, Madrid and a Master of Laws Degree (with Distinction) from University College, London.

Jennifer A. Hillman is currently a professor of practice at the Georgetown University Law Center, teaching the lead courses in international business and international trade, while serving as a fellow of Georgetown’s Institute of International Economic Law (IIEL). She is also co-director of the Center for Inclusive Trade and Development and served as a panelist for the second dispute under the USMCA (updated NAFTA)–a dispute between the United States and Canada over the application of US safeguard measures to imports of solar panels. She recently published Legal Aspects of Brexit:Implications of the United Kingdom’s Decision to Withdraw from the European Union (IIEL 2017), drawn from a seminar she co-taught in the fall of 2016.She has also written extensively about international trade law and the WTO, including a 2017 IIEL Policy Brief on the WTO consistency of the Ryan-Brady “A Better Way” tax proposal, co-authoring the leading casebook on trade, International Trade Law, 3rd ed., Wolters Kluwer (2016), papers on recent WTO cases on sanitary and phytosanitary measures (World Trade Review) and “Changing Climate for Carbon Taxes” (GMFUS.org).

Jennifer has had a distinguished career in public service, both nationally and internationally. She recently completed her term as one of seven members from around the world serving on the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Appellate Body. Prior to that, she served for nine years as a commissioner at the United States International Trade Commission (USITC), rendering decisions in more than six hundred investigations regarding injury to U.S. industries caused by imports that were dumped or subsidized, along with making numerous decisions in cases involving alleged patent or trademark infringement. Before her appointment to the USITC, Hillman served as general counsel at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), where she had previously been an ambassador and chief textiles negotiator. She also served as legislative director and counsel to U.S. Senator Terry Sanford of North Carolina.

Jennifer formerly served as a partner in the law firm of Cassidy Levy Kent, a senior transatlantic fellow for the German Marshall Fund of the United States, as president of the Trade Policy Forum and on the selection panel for the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the board of visitors at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. She is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and Duke University.

Jonathan Fried is a Senior Advisor at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group, a founding member of DGA Group, and is based in Ottawa. He draws on a long career in government service, diplomacy and multilateral trade policy to help clients anticipate risk, make business decisions and navigate trade landscapes in international markets, with particular expertise in Canada.

Jonathan joined DGA-ASG after a long and distinguished career of public service in Canada. He was most recently Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s personal representative for the G20. Previously, he served as Canada’s Ambassador to the World Trade Organization, where he played a key part in multilateral trade negotiations, serving as Chair of the WTO’s General Council in 2014.

Jonathan was also Canada’s Ambassador to Japan and the Executive Director for the Canadian, Irish and Caribbean constituency at the International Monetary Fund. Earlier in his career, he served as Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Paul Martin in Canada’s Privy Council Office and as Associate Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Among numerous other foreign affairs and trade roles across the Canadian government, Jonathan was Canada’s G7 and G20 finance deputy, Assistant Deputy Minister for Trade, Economic, and Environmental Policy, Director General for Trade Policy, and Chief Counsel for NAFTA. He also led negotiations for China’s WTO accession.

Dawn Shackleford is the President of Looking Glass Trade, LLC, providing strategic trade policy solutions for complex international trade challenges. She is a Director-at-Large on ANSI’s Board of Directors and a member of ANSI’s International Policy Advisory Group. Dawn was awarded the Association of Women in International Trade’s 2025 Government Service Award due to her long and distinguished career with the U.S. government, serving the United States and representing U.S. companies in the global trade space.

She served as the Executive Director for Trade Agreements Policy & Negotiations at the U.S. Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration from 2022 to 2025. In this capacity she oversaw Commerce Department engagement in multilateral trade institutions to help U.S. exporters, monitoring and import licensing of steel and aluminum trade to help U.S. importers and domestic industry, 232 related matters in cooperation with the Bureau of Industry & Security, and the facilitation of the U.S. Foreign Trade Zones program to bring jobs and manufacturing to the United States.

Prior to this position, Dawn served in various positions in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative from 2004 to 2022, including as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for the Office of Southeast Asia and the Pacific where she served as senior official for the Trade Pillar of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) negotiations, the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for WTO and Multilateral Affairs where she served as senior official for WTO, OECD, G20 and G7 engagement, and the Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for India, Nepal and Bhutan. She also served as the lead U.S. negotiator for the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, the customs and trade facilitation chapter of the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement, multiple WTO accession negotiations, and the government procurement chapters in the U.S. FTA negotiations with Oman and the United Arab Emirates. She also worked on various WTO, OECD, APEC, G20, and UN trade policy issues.

Dawn was elected to an international leadership position as the first female chairperson of the Trade Committee of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) from 2020 to 2021.

From 1998 to 2004 Dawn served as a policy analyst within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and in the Department of the Navy. From 2003 to 2005 she served as an adjunct professor at American University’s School of International Service.

She holds a Master of Arts Degree in International Affairs from American University in Washington, DC, a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Politics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and studied at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany.

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