Kati Suominen

Kati Suominen is a Research Fellow at the Hinrich Foundation. She is the Founder and CEO of Nextrade Group that helps governments, multilateral development banks, and Fortune 500 technology companies enable trade through technology. Nextrade's more than 50 clients include the World Bank, IFC, IDB, ADB, USAID, UK FCDO, Mastercard, Visa, Google, and eBay, among many others. She is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Kati has ideated and built dozens of data and analytical products and pilot initiatives as well as eight global initiatives and public-private-partnerships to enable digital trade - including, most recently, the Alliance for eTrade Development I and II between 14 leading companies and USAID to enable SME ecommerce in developing nations. She also serves as Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Adjunct Professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management. Earlier in her career, she served as Trade Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank and Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Kati is the author and editor of over 120 papers and 10 peer-reviewed books on trade, globalization and technology with leading academic publications, most recently Revolutionizing World Trade: How Disruptive Technologies Open Opportunities for All (Stanford University Press, 2019). She holds an MBA from Wharton School of Business (2009) and a joint PhD in Political Economy and International Relations from the University of California, San Diego (2004).

A native of Finland, Suominen came to the US on a full tennis scholarship on a Division I team.