Ann Marie Almeida is the President and CEO of the Association of Women's Business Centers (AWBC). The AWBC’s vision is a world where economic justice, wealth and well-being are realized through the collective leadership and power of entrepreneurial women by developing and strengthening a global network of women's business centers to advance the growth and success of women business owners. As President and CEO of the AWBC, Ann Marie Almeida directs training, mentoring, funding and research programs that foster prosperity, encourage entrepreneurship, support economic access and empower leadership among women entrepreneurs.

Previously, Almeida served as the Director of Programs and Development for the Camden Public Library in Camden, Maine. In this capacity, Almeida oversaw the development and implementation of over 175 annual educational, cultural and technological programs while also directing fundraising activities and annual giving strategies and programs, as well as marketing, media and public relations activities. Almeida also served as a consultant to the Camden Public Library Foundation where she provided financial, development and policy expertise to foundation trustees regarding the institution's long-term growth and direction.

Almeida was the Director of Finance for Kodak's creative imaging programs, Director of Research for the Center for Venture Research, Adjunct Professor of
Finance at the University of New Hampshire, Managing Director of the Kelmscott Rare Breeds Foundation, and both Vice President and Director of Finance for Maine Photographic and International Film and Television Workshops.

Almeida currently serves as a board and advisory member for several organizations, including the New England Time Dollar Network, The Crafts Center, Project Tsunami's Global Brain Trust, the Camden Conference on Foreign Affairs, and Mainely Girls, and she is the Community Chair for
the YMCA's giving program. She is also a featured speaker on Body and Soul, a nationally syndicated PBS series, and a host sponsor for the Nieman Fellows program of Harvard University.

Almeida earned her MBA with a concentration in finance from The Whittemore School of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology and Speech Communications from Boston College.

Benjamin Herzberg is a Private Sector Specialist in the Investment Climate Department of the World Bank. He works on investment climate reform and public-private dialogue mechanisms. Since he joined the World Bank Group in 2003, he led or participated to country interventions both for the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation on competitiveness, gender and policy advocacy.

Previously he was Senior Business Development Advisor at the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in Bosnia Herzegovina, responsible for developing strategies aimed at eliminating legal and regulatory obstacles to business competitiveness and investment growth. At the OHR, he developed and headed the "Bulldozer Initiative" project, an innovative methodology that elicited the broad participation of local businesspeople in identifying, lobbying for and securing implementation of legislative reforms that do away with pointless bureaucracy and legislative bottlenecks obstructing business growth.

He previously served as the Economic Advisor to the OSCE Mission to Bosnia Herzegovina, where he produced business development, training and advocacy programs promoting public-private partnerships and private-sector participation in civic society, and worked on projects to stimulate investment in the SME sector. The "YES" program (Youth Entrepreneurship Seminars) that he created there has since then been implemented in five different countries by OSCE and the World Bank.

Before that, Herzberg held senior Business Development positions in the private sector in the field of bio and high technologies.

Herzberg studied in France and Great Britain, and holds a post-graduate degree in Geography and Environment from the Universite des Sciences et Techniques, Lille, France and a Suma Cum Laude Master's degree in Geography from the Universite de la Sorbonne, Paris, France.

Dr. I M Faisal
Dr. Faisal is Environmental Specialist at SEDF/IFC, Dhaka. He is an expert on environmental and natural resources management and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Before joining SEF, Dr. Faisal served as Professor and Chair/Head in the Department of Environmental Studies at North South University and Department of Civil Engineering at Presidency University. He has over fifteen years of experience in teaching, research and consultancy. Dr. Faisal has over 70 publications in journals, proceedings, books and research reports to his credit.

Heather Gibb
Heather Gibb is a senior researcher at the North-South Institute, an independent research institute based in Ottawa, Canada that addresses relations between industrialized and developing countries. Her current research interests include gender mainstreaming, gender and trade, and workers' rights. She is currently coordinating an initiative, in partnership with local organizations, that will hold community-based workshops in Ontario farm communities on the findings from a major evaluation of Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (CSAWP).

Ms Gibb's recent publications include “From Platform to Declaration: Beijing and the MDGs”, in The Canadian Development Report 2005 , and “Supporting Marginalized Women Exporters: An Overview of Issues and Strategies”, 2004, prepared for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum's Committee on Trade and Investment. In 2003, Ms Gibb was member of The North-South Institute research team with Chantal Blouin, Maire MacAdams and Ann Weston that undertook the study, “Engendering Canadian Trade Policy: A Case Study of Labour Mobility in Trade Agreements”, with support from Status of Women Canada's Policy Research Fund.

Ms Gibb has extensive experience with gender in APEC, most recently as project coordinator for the Committee on Trade and Investment's project, “Supporting Potential Women Exporters”. In 2002, Ms Gibb conducted a review of gender integration in APEC on behalf of the organization's Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Gender Integration.  She was a member of the Canadian delegation to APEC's Human Resource Development Working Group from 1993-1999, coordinating several projects on gender and HRD issues and gender mainstreaming in APEC. 

Ms Gibb received her education from McGill University and the University of British Columbia, and is a member of the International Working Group on Gender, Macroeconomics, and International Economics (GEM-IWG).

Meg Jones
Meg Jones is the Executive Vice-President of the Organization of Women in International Trade and Deputy Director of the Evian Group, a Swiss-based think tank on trade. Meg's work on trade includes market analysis, where she is currently providing consultancy services to the Market Analysis Section of the International Trade Centre-UNCTAD/WTO. The focus of this work is on business development. Meg has run workshops and presentations in Africa, Europe and America on how women can use on-line market analysis tools to spot potential new export markets or source cheaper supplies.

Meg's work on policy targets the creation of an enabling environment for business through socially-responsible trade liberalization, in the interests of achieving economic growth, development and the greater prospect of peace. As an advocate for the economic empowerment of women, Meg believes that when governments and corporations take the gender-dimension into account in decision-making processes, choices can be made that build both community and the bottom-line. Meg bases her conviction on experience drawn from working for the United Nations both as a representative of her country and as an international civil servant (tasked specifically with South Asia) and also from her years working in universities, in the financial markets and with non-government organizations. She has organized several workshops and panels on gender and trade, including as a team-member preparing the first ever workshop on gender and trade at a WTO Symposium.

Barbara Mowat
Barbara Mowat is President of Impact Communications Ltd. a business development-training firm; and President of UniquelyCanada.com, an e-commerce gift store for micro-entrepreneurs. Barbara was the founder and Publisher of Home Business Report, the first Canadian national newsstand magazine for home-based businesses. She is also the creator of the Uniquely Programs, which assist entrepreneurs to access the global marketplace, and an international leader in the development of small and micro enterprises, with a special emphasis on women.

The multi-faceted companies all intertwine to encompass the development of micro, small and medium entrepreneurs accessing the global market place. Barbara's international work has assisted entrepreneurs throughout Canada, South East Asia, USA, South America, Europe, Afghanistan, and most recently in Africa, where she was the team leader to provide a women's economic empowerment program and training through the International Finance Corporation-Gender Entrepreneurship Markets.

Her achievements have been acknowledged with the presentation of the 1993 Canadian Women Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Impact on the Local Economy.

In a public service capacity, Barbara devotes considerable time and energy to sit on a number of boards and committees concerned with issues of promoting small business development which have included: UBC Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital Research Centre; Board of Director for the Canadian Council for Small Business; Board of Director for the Leadership and Management Council of B.C.; Member of the National Advisory Council for Women in Business for the Royal Bank; Chair of the Small Business Advisory Committee for the Royal Bank of Canada; Member of the Abbotsford Economic Development Commission; Member of the Small Business Strategy Committee for B.C.; Member of the Small Business Working Committee for the Federal Government's Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Industry; Member of the Treasury Board of Canada's Joint Forum on Small Business Issues; BC Business Task Force Member for Regulatory Issues for the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Small Business; Vice-Chair of the Canada BC Business Services Society; Executive Director of Women Trading Globally for the Global Banking Alliance for Women Entrepreneurs and Vice-President of Memberships for IWF Canada [International Women's Forum], and currently on the Advisory Board of KCTS Public Broadcasting TV station in Seattle, Washington.

Dr. Elizabeth Parsan
Dr. Parsan holds a PhD in Economics, with a specialization in international trade from the University of Sussex, England, and a Certificate in Trade Policy and Commercial Diplomacy from Carleton University, Canada. In the past, she has held various technical and advisory positions at the Commonwealth Secretariat, London; the Caribbean Development Bank, Barbados; and the Cayman Islands Government, Grand Cayman. She has also held lectured at the University of the West Indies in International Economics, Mathematics and Statistics.

Currently, Dr. Parsan works as an international trade & development consultant and has been retained by CIDA to advise on its Three-Year Trade and Competitiveness Program in the Caribbean. She has conducted training on project management for senior public servants; advised on strategic planning, including gender planning for international organizations; and advised governments on financial management reform. Her current research interests include gender and trade, trade facilitation and SME development.

Megh Ranjani Rai
Megh has widely traveled in most of the district of Nepal and India, Maldives, Sri Lanka and southern China- Yunnan Province that gives her an added advantage of being able to practically assess implementation strategies and their viability in the present context. Her work has given her wide orientation to the physical, socio-economical and cultural conditions that exist in the diversity within Nepal and India. She is conversant with local situations, with local organizations and government bodies and is good with multidisciplinary and multi lingual teams, with people and communities. She has is able to coordinate work under extreme physical conditions.

She is a member of advocacy network and has helped to facilitate linkages between various groups. She is an Indigenous Peoples network and advocacy member and has represented her people at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous issues. She also works with Programme design and monitoring facilities with a special focus on Caste and Ethnicity .

She has also participated, co-facilitated and helped organize national and international seminars and conferences and has had both national as well as international exposure to gender, and women issues.

Megh has been involved in gender based research studies that have covered areas in Nepal and India, Bangladesh and has been a presenter on development programs and indigenous issues at Denmark, Philippines, Laos, Tanzania and the UN head quarters in New York.