Ms. Deborah Elms is the Founder and Executive Director of the Asian Trade Centre. She is also Vice Chair of the Asia Business Trade Association. She sits on the International Technical Advisory Committee of the Global Trade Professionals Alliance and is Chair of the Working Group on Trade Policy and Law. She holds a senior fellow position in the Singapore Ministry of Trade and Industry’s Trade Academy. Lately, she was a member of the advisory board on the hackathon for model provisions for trade in times of crisis and pandemic in regional and other trade agreements organized by the UN and the WTO. 

Previously, Ms. Elms was head of the Temasek Foundation Centre for Trade & Negotiations and Senior Fellow of International Political Economy at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. 

She worked on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and global value chains. She has provided consulting on a range of trade issues to governments including the United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Taiwan Province of China, and Singapore. 

Ms. Elms received a PhD in political science from the University of Washington, a MA in international relations from the University of Southern California, and bachelor’s degrees from Boston University. Dr Elms publishes the Talking Trade Blog.