Speakers

Mr. Gregory McGuire - Venture Strategies Ltd

A graduate of the University of the West Indies, Mr McGuire holds a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Economics. He has also had extensive post-graduate management training at the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, Harvard Business School, MW Kellogg School of Management, Oxford College of Petroleum Studies, and the London Strategic Planning Society.   Mr. McGuire has had a distinguished career in Business spanning thirty years. He  spent   twenty three years at the National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited,( NGC)  where he had managerial responsibility  mainly for the Strategic Planning and Marketing process. He was chiefly responsible for institutionalizing the Strategic Planning process and the introduction of the Balanced Scorecard management process at the National Gas Company. He was deeply involved in all major contract negotiations for gas purchases and sales during the  period 1991 to 1996, and was part of the joint marketing team that negotiated the LNG sales contract for Atlantic LNG Train 1.  He pioneered strategic initiatives to boost the Company’s sales to the light industrial and commercial market.

He is also an experienced researcher having written and published papers on strategic planning, the energy industry, technology transfer, trade and public finance.  He has conducted market/ economics research work on energy policy and market studies for a wide range of institutions and companies, local and international, including OLADE, ECLAC, IDB and Caricom.

Mr. Mc Guire is also a director of the Lloyd Best Institute of the West Indies, member of the Board of Governors of the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre and part time senior lecturer at UWI St. Augustine.  

Melanie Richard - Trinidad and Tobago Extractive Industries Initiative (TTEITI)

Melanie Richards is the Interim Head of the Trinidad and Tobago Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (TTEITI) and has been working in the field of sustainability and corporate citizenship for close to a decade. She is the founder of CSR Solutions Limited, an organisation which specialises in Social Responsibility and Sustainability and has recently been dubbed “Captain Sustainability” by the UK’s Next Woman Magazine.
A former accountant and auditor, Melanie appreciates the need for organisations to be profitable, but believes that this must not be achieved at the expense of being responsible.
In 2013, Melanie was selected to write the Trinidad and Tobago Chapter, for the World Guide for Sustainable Businesses, edited by Professor Wayne Visser, which will be published by Green Leaf Publishing in the fall of 2014.
She holds an MA in Corporate Social Responsibility from the University of Nottingham, as well as an MBA, and a B.Sc. in Management from the University of the West Indies. She has completed the 1stand 2ndlevels of the ACCA professional accounting designation examinations and is Certified in Sustainability Reporting by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).

Victor Hart - Trinidad and Tobago Extractive Industries Initiative (TTEITI)

Victor Hart is a retired construction professional with qualifications as a Chartered Quantity Surveyor and holder of an MSc Degree in Project Management from UK Universities. Throughout his professional life, he has been an advocate for transparency and accountability in the public and private sectors and, after his retirement, he has continued to promote those ideals as a civil society activist.

 

Mr. Hart served for three years as Chairman of the Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute, the local Chapter of Transparency International, the global coalition against corruption. He was also a commissioner on the Commission of Enquiry into the Piarco Airport Development Project that led to several corruption charges being laid in the Courts locally and in the USA.

 

Currently, Mr. Hart is Chair of the Cabinet-appointed Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Steering Committee charged with bringing greater transparency and accountability to Trinidad and Tobago’s oil, gas and mining sectors. He has attended and addressed conferences on the EITI in France, Peru, Australia and Colombia. He has represented Trinidad and Tobago at and addressed other conferences in the Caribbean, North, Central and South America, Africa, India, Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific.

Jana L. Morgan - Publish What You Pay USA

 

Jana joined Publish What You Pay United States in August 2013 to lead and coordinate the coalition’s advocacy for improved policies within the US government, multinational companies, and international financial institutions, and to support work on the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI). Previously, Jana worked at Global Witness, conducting advocacy and research on the extractive sector of Afghanistan, conflict minerals in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and the development of the governance systems for Uganda’s emerging oil sector. Jana led advocacy, analysis and research to support the development of regulations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to implement Section 1502 of the U.S. Dodd-Frank Act on conflict minerals. She spearheaded Global Witness’ response to an industry lawsuit filed against the SEC to overturn Section 1502 and its implementing regulations–a lawsuit that the plaintiffs ultimately lost. Prior to Global Witness, Jana served as PWYP US Research Fellow, supporting advocacy and conducting research on extractives' transparency precedents.  She holds an MA in International Relations from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and a Certificate of Advanced Study in Conflict Resolution. She received her BA in Government from St. Lawrence University.

Claire Woodside - Publish What You Pay - Canada

Claire Woodside is the Director of Publish What You Pay-Canada. Drawing upon her background in political science and international development, including an M.A. from Dalhousie and doctoral studies at NPSIA (Carleton), Claire works to create a more transparent and accountable global extractive sector.  Through her role with PWYP, she has the opportunity to engage with governments, industry and civil society in Canada, including PWYP-Canada’s members, while also collaborating with PWYP coalitions around the world.  She is currently preparing a training course on revenue management in the Canadian extractive sector for the Central African Mining Academy in Cameroon. Claire has been working with PWYP since 2008, but has held her currently position since 2012. She brings over ten years of experience working and researching on issues related to the extractive sector and responsible governance to the position.

Kady Seguin - Publish What You Pay - Canada

Kady Seguin is a Programme Analyst at PWYP-Canada and leads PWYP-Canada's capacity building efforts for accessing and mobilizing information on oil, gas and mining companies. She has facilitated numerous workshops and training sessions around the world, including in Canada, the Netherlands, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Senegal, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. She is the author of An Eye on Disclosure: The PWYP-Canada Guide to Finding Information on Public Mining Companies in Canada, and continues to provide ongoing support to PWYP-Canada’s partners around the world searching for information on oil, gas and mining companies. Kady holds an M.A. in the field of Globalization and International Development at the University of Ottawa. Her research focused on the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, a multistakeholder initiative in the area of security and human rights in the extractive sector.

Dr. Jens-Ulrich Poppen - British Council

Dr. Jens-Ulrich Poppen currently serves in the role of Director Partnerships Caribbean for the British Council based in Port of Spain. His responsibilities include resource mobilisation and business development across the region including managing the Council’s corporate relations with international donors, Third Sector partners as well as multilateral development organisations. In establishing new partnerships and developing the programmatic framework for the British Council in the Caribbean, Dr. Poppen focuses primarily on the area of skills development and education, governance and civil society as well as on the issues of citizen security and access to justice. In his previous position as Programme Officer at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Trinidad and Tobago, he was responsible for managing the agency’s democratic governance project portfolio covering a broad range of development interventions including parliamentary modernisation, nation-building and constitutional transition (in the Dutch Caribbean), anti-corruption as well as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

Dr. Poppen holds a MA of Arts in International Relations from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa and a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).