Speakers

Biography

Graham Russell is Chief Executive of the UK Office for Product Safety and Standards, part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

The Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) was created in January 2018 and regulates a wide range of products with a focus on their safety and integrity, from design to disposal. OPSS is the Government lead for standards and accreditation and market surveillance coordination as well as leading on good regulatory delivery including the Regulators’ Code and operating Primary Authority which 100,000 businesses are participating in, giving them access to assured advice. Graham’s career and experience has been as a regulator, first in local government where he led a number of regulatory services and created new regulatory functions responsible for animal health and welfare and claims management. After working with government teams supporting UK regulatory reform reviews, Graham was appointed the first chief executive of the Local Better Regulation Office (LBRO) and established LBRO as a pioneer in the concept of regulatory delivery.

Graham led a range of initiatives to test new approaches to the effective delivery of regulation at a local level. Graham continued to lead the organisation through expansion of remit as the Better Regulation Delivery Office in 2012, Regulatory Delivery in 2016 before the creation of the Office for Product Safety and Standards in 2018.

Biography

Paul Scully MP was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on 13 February 2020. He is responsible for Small Business, Consumers and Labour Markets and is Minister for London.

Paul has been the Member of Parliament for Sutton and Cheam since 2015. Prior to his appointment as a Minister, he was a member of both the Petitions Committee and the International Development Committee, for which he chaired the sub-committee overseeing the work of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact.

In 2017 he was appointed as the Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Brunei, Thailand and Burma and was the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Baroness Evans, the Leader of the House of Lords between November 2017 and January 2018. He was also the Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party with responsibility for the London region.

Before joining Parliament, Paul ran a number of small businesses and served as Councillor in the London Borough of Sutton.

Biography

Christine Zhenwei Qiang is Practice Manager of Investment Climate. Her teams advise client governments in over 100 countries on catalyzing private investment and competition through legal, policy, regulatory and institutional reforms. She oversees the Global Investment Competitiveness Report series. She has published journal articles, book chapters and reports on private sector development, economic growth, FDI, productivity and infrastructure development. Prior to joining the Investment Climate Department in 2011, she was Lead Economist at the Policy Division of the ICT Department of the World Bank Group. She has a PhD in Economics from Johns Hopkins University.

Biography

Nick Malyshev is Head of the OECD Regulatory Policy Division where he directs thematic analysis and country reviews of regulatory reform in OECD and non-OECD countries. He was responsible for updating the OECD normative framework on regulatory policy, now the 2012 Recommendation on Regulatory Policy and Governance. He is co-author of a number of OECD publications, including the 2015 Regulatory Policy Outlook, the 2011 publication, Regulatory Policy and Governance, Supporting Economic Growth and Serving the Public Interest and the 2010 study Risk and Regulatory Policy, Improving the Governance of Risk. He has also worked with a number of national governments to support their efforts to realise regulatory reforms including, most recently, Korea, Peru, Chile and Mexico. While at the OECD he has also worked extensively on the economic transition in Russia and central and Eastern Europe, including analytical and advisory work on a range of topics including regulatory policy and institutional reforms. Prior to joining the OECD, Mr. Malyshev worked as a financial analyst at GlaxoSmithKline, a pharmaceuticals company, and as a securities trader at Wall Street West, an investment bank. Mr. Malyshev, a US national, holds degrees in economics from Duke University and Colorado College.

Biography

Florentin Blanc has been working for nearly 20 years in international development and cooperation issues, and over 16 years on regulatory policy and regulatory delivery. He has worked in over 40 countries throughout most of the world, with a particular focus on regulatory enforcement and inspections, a topic on which he has written or contributed to a number of major publications, including for the OECD (2014 Principles and 2018 Toolkit). He has also extensive experience and expertise in food safety regulation, technical regulations and product-market regulations, risk-based regulation, licensing and permitting etc. He holds a PhD in Law in Leiden University (NL) on how risk-based inspections and enforcement can contribute to improving regulatory outcomes (public welfare) while also reducing the economic costs of regulation and strengthening state legitimacy. After an initial career in education, and 3 years in an international NGO, he worked for 15 years with the World Bank Group, with occasional consulting assignments for the OECD and other organizations or countries. He has also been conducting research work, in particular on questions linked to the drivers of regulatory compliance and behaviour change. Since 2019, he has joined the OECD to lead work on regulatory delivery, in particular inspections, enforcement, technological transformation of regulation, and administrative barriers issues, as well as develop work on technical regulations (food safety, product safety, environmental protection etc.).  

Biography

Christopher Hodges is Professor of Justice Systems and Head of the Swiss Re Research Programme on Civil Justice Systems at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford; Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford; and a Fellow of the European Law Institute. He has held a Professorship at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and Honorary/Visiting Chairs at the China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing, Leuven University and ANU Canberra. His expertise is regulatory, enforcement and dispute resolution systems He is a founding member of the International Network for Delivery of Regulation (INDR), and he and advises many governments and businesses. His many books include Ethical Business Practice and Regulation (with Ruth Steinholtz); Law and Corporate Behaviour (2015); Delivering Dispute Resolution (2019); Regulatory Delivery (with Graham Russell, 2019).

Biography

Tania Ghossein is a lawyer with the World Bank Group in Washington DC since 2008. She is currently a Senior Global Specialist in the Global Business Regulation Unit of the Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice where she is advising governments on how to improve their business regulatory environments. Prior to that, Tania was leading the World Bank’s Benchmarking Public Procurement as well as the Procuring Infrastructure Public-Private Partnerships global projects. Prior to joining the World Bank, Tania worked as a corporate lawyer and had extensive experience in the private banking sector in Beirut, Lebanon. She then moved to the US and joined the Embassy of Jordan in Washington D.C. Tania holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in international and comparative law from the George Washington University Law School and a law degree from the Saint-Joseph University in Beirut, Lebanon. Tania has published several reports and papers on the topics of public procurement and private sector development, among others.

Biography

Goran Vranic is Technical Lead for RegTech at the World Bank Group in Washington DC. Goran leads knowledge management and support to client governments in the areas of agile regulation, disruptive technologies, and digital G2B service delivery. Before joining the World Bank, he worked as an international consultant, government official, and in private business, specializing in the areas of business analysis, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, design, and implementation of complex technology solutions and information security. He holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering, computer science, and automation.

Biography

Lars Grava is a Senior Private Sector Specialist at the World Bank Group’s Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice, Global Business Regulation unit.  Lars is an attorney who has managed and advised investment climate, private sector development and regulatory governance projects for more than 20 years in more than 50 countries worldwide.  Lars specializes in reducing administrative burdens imposed on businesses and has developed extensive experience in legal and regulatory frameworks, integrated government services, procedural simplification, licensing and inspections reforms, risk-based regulation and monitoring and evaluation systems.  He has provided training and written publications on these topics.  Lars has a Juris Doctor degree from New York University School of Law. 

Biography

Sylvia Solf is the Global Lead for Business regulation in the Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Practice of the World Bank Group where she currently oversees business regulation reform programs in over 60 countries worldwide.  She has led trainings and workshops on regulatory reform around the world, and has traveled to over 70 countries researching or advising governments on regulatory reform. Prior to joining the World Bank Group, she worked on portfolio management at the Inter-American Development Bank as well as in the private and non-profit sectors in Chile and Mexico. She holds a Master of Arts in International Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. As a German national, she is fluent in English, Spanish and French.

Biography

Prof Dr Andrew Grainger is a trade facilitation practitioner, expert and academic with over 20 years of experience. As the Director of Trade Facilitation Consulting, he helps government agencies, companies and international organisations cut red-tape in international trade. Recent clients include the German GIZ, PwC, KGH Customs, Enterprise Ireland, LSE, the UK Government, and the European institutions. Assignments range from detailed economic research to practical trade policy advice, business process analysis, project support, and executive training. Andrew is also an Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Customs and Excise Studies (CSU, Australia) and an Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham (UK). Much of his award-winning PhD thesis is based on his experiences as Deputy Director for Trade Procedures at SITPRO, the UK’s former trade facilitation agency. Andrew’s forthcoming academic textbook, titled “Cross Border Logistics Operations: effective trade facilitation and border management”, will be published by Kogan on 3 August 2021. 

Biography

Helen Poulsen is a senior advisor at the Cross Whitehall Prosperity Fund. She is a social development adviser with over 20 years’ experience in government, NGO and the private sector.

Biography

Leads work within BRE to internationalise our approach to better regulation, including in relation to emerging technologies, both bi-laterally and multi-laterally (through fora such as the World bank, Commonwealth, G7/G20, OECD and UN). This also includes working across Government to embed international regulatory cooperation more systematically in the policy making cycle and regulatory processes.

Before joining BRE, Jonathan worked in several regulatory policy roles across Government – most recently leading work on the Online Harms White Paper considering how to address harmful online content, and also press, telecoms and broadcast regulation before that. He started his career in the Department for Work and Pensions working on international and EU policy.

Jonathan is a graduate of the London School of Economics, holding a BA in Geography and MSc in Global Politics.

Biography

Kathryn is an Environmental Health Practitioner by profession and spent 20 years working in local government before moving to central government in 2011. She started her career at Coventry City Council followed by a move to Telford & Wrekin Council. She moved to North West Leicestershire District Council in 1999 and became Head of Service in 2005. Since joining the Better Regulation Delivery Office in 2011, now the Office for Product Safety & Standards, Kathryn has developed and led the Better Business for All programme and more recently has taken on the management of the Primary Authority scheme. Her focus is on developing and championing regulatory approaches that work for business whilst achieving compliance and keeping the public safe.

Biography

Marianna B. Karttunen has worked as a Policy Analyst at the OECD Regulatory Policy Division, focusing on international regulatory co-operation since February 2016. In this position, she has carries out innovative policy work on international regulatory co-operation, including leading the first in-depth country reviews on the subject, various studies on the role of international organisations as platforms for IRC, and the importance of IRC in the context of COVID-19. Previously, she held a position as Policy Adviser at the OECD G8-G20 Sherpa Office and conducted research at the Trade and Environment Division of the WTO. Karttunen has a Ph.D. in Law from the European University Institute and is the author of Transparency in the WTO SPS and TBT Agreements: The Real Jewel in the Crown (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Biography

Peter joined BSI in 2015 in the role of Head of International Engagement. Peter and his team are responsible for developing and maintaining strategically important international relationships between BSI and a range of other National Standards Bodies and key stakeholders. The international engagement team support and encourage the increased use of international standards, to further international trade and investment. As part of this, BSI with support from UK Aid has developed the Commonwealth Standards Network, the network supports ODA eligible countries to adopt and implement standards, to facilitate greater volumes of intra-Commonwealth trade, supporting economic prosperity and developmental outcomes. The programme further supports ODA eligible countries in the Commonwealth to increase participation in international standards development activity.

Biography

Mr. Mika Vepsalainen is a development economist at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). He has degrees in business management and intercultural communications and has over 35 years of experience in developing and managing development cooperation activities in Africa, Central Asia, South-East Asia and Central and Eastern Europe. His current work as Chief, Market Access at the Economic Cooperation and Trade Division at the UNECE covers regulatory cooperation and standardization policies including the management of several intergovernmental working groups focusing on topics such as gender-responsive standards and standardization, food loss and waste in international supply chains and, most recently, the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on non-tariff measures impacting cross-border trade.

Biography

Emily is a specialist in qualitative social research, with over 9 years’ experience working with government and third sector clients. Throughout her career she has worked closely with hard-to-reach and vulnerable audiences, including elderly people, people suffering from loneliness, and ethnic minorities.
Emily has worked closely with the Food Standards Agency, the Financial Conduct Authority and Payment Systems Regulator. She has also led social policy research for Whitehall and third-sector clients including DfT, DCMS, HMRC, the Health Foundation and the British Red Cross. Emily works across a wide variety of policy areas including science and technology, ethnicity and communities, tax and finance, and social inclusion.

Biography

Talia joined BritainThinks in 2019, and has extensive experience conducting qualitative research with hard to reach audiences and those in vulnerable circumstances. Talia joined BritainThinks from the Research Institute for Disabled Consumers, where she conducted user-led research with disabled and older people to improve the accessibility of environments, services and products.

Talia has particular experience conducting user-led research across a range of sectors including transportation, financial services, public sector and third sector organisations. She has delivered research for clients including Motability, Citizens Advice, HMICFRS and the Home Office.