Laurie Kelleher

Laurie has more than 20 years of experience in international affairs and trade policy and promotion, gained from working at the Commerce Department, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), and the State Department in Washington, Geneva, Kyiv, Tbilisi, Almaty, Pittsburgh, and now Accra.

Laurie started her career in the ITA in 1996 as a business counselor and desk officer for Central Europe. At USTR, she served as a U.S. diplomat at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland for five years and held several other positions including Director for the European Union; Director for Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus; and Director for Central Asia and Iraq. She served as an embedded U.S. trade advisor in Ukraine’s Ministry of Industry and Trade.

She holds a dual MA from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and International Business Diplomacy program and a BA from Bard College in History. She was an exchange student at Charles University in Prague and the Rotary Club’s first American exchange student to Yugoslavia. She speaks Russian and French.