Fall Is A Time For Farewells, Hellos At UN Agencies, Law Offices, NGOs, Industry

As autumn rolled in, two United Nations agencies chose global figures to help them with their missions, another has a new website, and changed heads, while non-governmental organisations, law offices, and industry also saw numerous changes at management level.

International Organisations

Shakeel Bhatti, Secretary of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) is stepping down and heading back to WIPO, where he was prior to joining the plant treaty. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has appointed Kent Nnadozie as Ad-Interim Secretary of the Secretariat.

Meanwhile, the Secretariat of the ITPGRFA has a new website. Users visiting www.planttreaty.org will be redirected to the new address www.fao.org/plant-treaty. According to the plant treaty, the new website has a higher level of integration with the FAO’s corporate websites and services, with a new country profile section and improved access to information on projects funded by the Benefit-sharing Fund of the treaty.

All documents produced by the treaty’s secretariat since 2007 have been placed in the FAO Corporate Document Repository.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma has been named Special Advisor for youth entrepreneurship and small business to the UN Conference on Trade and Development. Ma is expected to champion initiatives to make it easier for young entrepreneurs and small businesses, particularly in developing countries, to participate in global trade. He is also expected to raise awareness about the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg became the World Health Organization’s Global Ambassador for non-communicable diseases (NCDs – including heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases.) Bloomberg has been working with WHO for the last decade on tobacco control and injury prevention. He is expected to work with national and local political leaders around the globe to highlight the burden of NCDs and injuries.

Following the restructuring of the Outbreaks and Health Emergencies Cluster (OHE), the WHO team working on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance and national actions plans in the department of Pandemic and Epidemic Diseases (PED) is moving into the AMR Secretariat in the Director General’s Office.

Suzanne Hill is the new Director of Essential Medicines and Health Products at WHO.

UN Women inaugurated its Geneva Liaison Office on 6 October. The new office is expected to provide strategic support and boost efforts for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls worldwide.

Governments

Valentin Zellweger is the new Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the United Nations Office in Geneva. Zellweger was previously Deputy Director and then Director of the International Public Law Directorate at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.

[Note: for recent changes in government delegates on IP in Geneva, please see the updated IP-Watch IP Delegates in Geneva.]

Private Sector/NGOs

Grega Kumer, former United Kingdom delegate to the World Intellectual Property Organization, is now Manager, Legal Issues for the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations.

Sophie Thievenaz is now Communications Officer at the Medicines Patent Pool. Thievenaz comes from UNICEF where she served as a Communications Officer for the Sanitation and Water for All Global Partnership.

Last spring, the Bern Declaration changed its name to Public Eye. The new name better describes the Swiss non-governmental organisation’s role and is more representative of the values, aims and methods of the organisation, which focuses on the issue of business and human rights, Public Eye explained.

Dan Pescod, former Campaign Manager, International, Europe and Accessibility at the Royal National Institute of Blind People in the United Kingdom, is now Head of Policy and Campaigns for the institute.

David Hammerstein, former Member of the European Parliament for Los Verdes, Spain, part of the European Greens, is now coordinator for Commons Network, among other involvements. He also spoke on behalf of the World Blind Union at the first WIPO Marrakesh Treaty Assembly on 5 October.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) announced that Adrian Strain will be stepping down from his position as global director of communications at the end of the year. According to IFPI, Strain is expected to set up a consultancy practice working in and outside the music industry.

Syngenta announced in September several management changes. John Ramsay, Syngenta’s Chief Financial Officer since 2007 and Chief Executive Officer ad interim until June, is retiring after 32 year spent with the company. Mark Patrick, currently Head of Commercial Finance will succeed Ramsay as CFO.

Syngenta also announced that Jeff Rowe was appointed to the new role of President Global Seeds and North America. This role combines the responsibility for the global seeds strategy and execution, and the leadership of the North American business across seeds and crop protection.

Small Planet Institute announced [pdf] that Timothy Wise, Tufts University researcher and writer, joined the institute as Senior Researcher to start a programme on Land and Food Rights.

Professor Mike Hinchey, Director of Lero, the Irish software research centre, and Professor of Software Engineering at the University of Limerick, Ireland, and consultant to the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration, became President of the International Federation for Information Processing. Hinchey follows after Leon Strous.

Law Offices

Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP announced that Christopher Hanba joined as a Partner in the Intellectual Property Litigation Practice Group of the firm’s Intellectual Property Department. He comes from the Chicago office of K&L Gates LLP.

Dentons Europe LLP announced that they have entered into association with Arman Pirouzan Parvine Legal Institute, an Iranian law firm based in Tehran, to better serve its international clients doing business and investing in Iran.

Larissa Park joined DLA Piper’s Intellectual Property and Technology practice as a partner in their Boston office. She comes from Wilmer Hale in Boston, where she served as counsel in the firm’s IP practice group.

Robert Isackson has joined Venable LPP as partner in their New York office. Isackson is joining from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, where he was a partner. He joins Venable’s national intellectual property practice with over 50 IP attorneys.

McDermott Will & Emery announced that Mark Schreiber joined the firm as a partner in the Boston office and will lead the firm’s Global Privacy and Cyber-security practice. Before joining McDermott, Schreiber was a private practitioner, and a former chief trial lawyer for the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination in the 1970s.

DLA Piper Canada is combining with Dimock Stratton LLP. Sixteen lawyers from Dimock Stratton will be joining the DLA Piper office in Toronto as from 1 November.

 

Image Credits: James Cridland