Competition in the digital age

Dr. Deborah Elms is the Founder and Executive Director of the Asian Trade Centre and the President of the Asia Business Trade Association.

Concurrently, she is a member of APCO’s International Advisory Council, the G20 Trade and Investment Research Network, and the Advisory Board of the Trade and Investment Negotiation Adviser at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.

Dr. Elms has extensive experience working with governments, international organizations, and businesses and is one of the leading experts on trade policy in the region. She was also active in her past leadership posts in international trade groups having served on the Trade and Investment Council of the World Economic Forum from 2017 to 2019, the International Technical Advisory Committee of the Global Trade Professionals Alliance, as well as being the chair of its Working Group on Trade Policy and Law.

Prior to her current role, Dr. Elms was head of the Temasek Foundation Centre for Trade and Negotiations and Senior Fellow of International Political Economy at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Dr. Elms received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Washington, an MA in international relations from the University of Southern California, and bachelor’s degrees from Boston University. Dr. Elms frequently appears in the media to provide expert analysis on trade issues in the region and publishes the Talking Trade Blog.

Dionisis leads Google’s economic & competition policy strategy in Asia-Pacific. Previously, he led Google’s Government Affairs and Public Policy in Vietnam, Pakistan and in South-East Europe.

Before joining Google, he served as global communications manager at Procter & Gamble and as General Manager at the Greek Semiconductor Industry Association.

Earlier, he developed energy, environment and economic policy scenarios for the European Commission. He holds a Master’s in Sustainable Business Development from the Erasmus University of Rotterdam and a Integrated master in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. He is passionate to work with global stakeholders toward a bright digital future for economic growth and social prosperity.

Dr. Menon joined the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in 2020 to continue his work on trade and development in the Asian region, following his early retirement from the ADB. His last post at the ADB was Lead Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist.

He began work life as an academic in Australia, spending almost a decade at the Centre of Policy Studies at Monash University, one of the leading centres for computable general equilibrium modelling. He has worked at several other academic institutions including the University of Melbourne, Victoria University, the American University in Washington, DC and the ADB Institute in Tokyo. He has served as a Board Director of CDRI, Cambodia, and on the Advisory Board of the University of Nottingham, Malaysia. He holds adjunct appointments with the Australian National University, University of Nottingham, UK and IDEAS, Malaysia. He has authored/edited 15 books, 40 chapters in books and 80 articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Hosuk Lee-Makiyama is the director of European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) and a leading author on trade diplomacy, EU-Far East relations and the digital economy.

He is regularly consulted by governments and international organisations on a range of issues, from trade negotiations to economic reforms. He appears regularly in European, Chinese and US media, and is noted for his involvement in WTO and major free trade agreements.

He was also named “One of the 20 most influential people for open internet” by the readers of the Guardian UK in 2012. He was the first author to argue for a WTO case on internet censorship in China. Prior to joining ECIPE, he was an independent counsel on regulatory affairs, competition and communication, Senior Advisor at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, representative of Sweden and the EU member states towards the WTO and the UN, including WIPO and UNECE.

Lee-Makiyama is also a Fellow at the department International Relations at the London School of Economics, and currently shares his time between LSE and ECIPE.