Biographies of CUTS London Resouce Center Trustees
Pradeep S Mehta (Chair, Founder)
Pradeep S Mehta is the founder Secretary General of the Jaipur-based Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS), one of the largest consumer groups in India. Pradeep Mehta studied at The Scindia School, Gwalior (higher secondary), St Xavier’s College at Calcutta (B. Com) University and law at the Rajasthan University, Jaipur.
He serves on several policy making bodies of the Government of India, related to trade, environment and consumer affairs, including the National Advisory Committee on International Trade of the Ministry of Commerce. He also serves on the Executive Board of the International Centre for Trade & Sustainable Development, Geneva and chairs the Advisory Board of the South Asia Network on Trade, Economics and Environment, Kathmandu.
Pradeep Mehta also serves on the advisory boards of Centre Advisory & Review Group of the Research Centre on Regulation and Competition, Institute for Development Policy and Management, Manchester University, UK; Institute for Consumer Antitrust, Loyola College, Chicago, USA and the OECD’s Advisory Committee for Investment in Africa, Paris.
In the past, he has served on the governing boards of the Life Insurance Corporation of India, Mumbai and the Consumer Coordination Council, New Delhi.
A prolific writer, gifted speaker, skilled trainer and organiser in the social field, he has been named as one of the 30 most famous columnists in India by a leading Indian newspaper. Over 700 articles of Mehta have been published in several newspapers and magazines on issues relating to consumerism, competition policy, and trade & economics.
He has written and edited several books and monographs such as: WTO and India: An Agenda for Action in Post Doha Scenario; Analyses of the Interaction between Trade and Competition Policy; Multilateralisation of Sovereignty; How to survive as a consumer; Numbers, at what cost.
Julius Sen (Treasurer, Founder)
Julius Sen is currently Associate Director and Senior Programme Adviser at Enterprise LSE, which is the commercial arm of the LSE dealing with consultancy, executive education, executive briefings, and commercial research. He is also the Senior Programme Advisor for the International Trade Policy Unit in the department of International Relations.
He has a degree in History from Carleton University, Ottawa, and an MSc in Social Policy and Planning for Developing Countries, from the LSE, London. He is currently completing his PhD on ‘Constructing Negotiating Mandates for International Trade Negotiations: India during the Uruguay Round’.
From 1976 till recently, Julius Sen was in the higher civil service in India (the Indian Administrative Service) and was assigned to the Northeastern states of Manipur and Tripura as his permanent cadre. He has spent about ten years working in the North –East, mainly in Tripura, and has held a variety of positions at the district and secretariat levels. His main strength and experience was in project design and implementation in tribal areas, but he is equally comfortable with all other areas of government activity, including financial management, industrial policy, planning, local self government, welfare of scheduled castes, etc. In addition, he has held various positions in the Central Government, including assignments in the National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie, private secretary to the minister for Internal Security, posts in the Home and Human Resource development ministries. Before coming to the UK, he was Director General of an organisation called the Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan, which coordinated all youth and adventure activities for the central government.
Since coming to the UK, in addition to his work on his thesis, he has been teaching at the LSE and Birkbeck, where he was academic adviser on International and European Studies for the Faculty of Continuing Education for a period of two years, and has been a consultant on a number of research projects mainly dealing with trade policy and/or developing countries. He has written extensively on trade policy issues, particularly with reference to India and has recently completed articles on ‘Trade Policy Making in India: the reality below the water line’ and on ‘Trade Facilitation in South Asia: Issues for national governments’.
Phil Evans (Founder)
Phil Evans is an independent consultant specialised in competition policy, trade policy and consumer affairs. Until 2005, he was a Principal Policy Adviser at the UK Consumers' Association (now Which?) where he is responsible for dealing with both competition policy investigations and submissions, and developing its trade policy.
He has co-authored two books for the Economist Intelligence Unit on the subject of international trade and trade policy; authored a consumer guide to international trade; one on aviation competition and The Which? Guide to Rip Off Britain: and How to Beat it.
He has written widely on matters of international economic policy and has authored numerous country reports on economic policy issues in developing countries. For a number of years he wrote a quarterly briefing on US trade policy for business readers. He has written a number of studies on various aspects of international economic policy and has completed a study on aviation and tourism competition developments for UNCTAD.
Phil Evans has also developed and taught a range of courses on globalisation and international management issues at a number of universities, including the LSE and the University of North Carolina. He has also acted as an advisor to a number of national and international groups on trade policy and competition matters.
Olivia Blanc-Brude (Founder)
Olivia Blanc-Brude completed her undergraduate studies in politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University and her Master's degree in International Relations at the International University of Japan.
Having worked for a private consulting company in London as a business and economics analyst, she joined CUTS-CITEE in Jaipur working on the Investment for Development project on foreign direct investment, contributing to the 7-UP project on competition policy and writing articles, briefing papers and reports.
At the end of 2001, she returned to London to represent CUTS in Europe and to set up the CUTS London office and to contribute to other CUTS activities and project development. Since 2002, she has been researching for her PhD on "Privatisation of water services in developing countries" at the London School of Economics Development Studies Institute.
Allan Asher (Trustee)
Allan Asher is Chief Executive of energywatch, an independent action group committed to improving the consumer experience of energy markets.
He joined energywatch from the Consumers' Association where he was Director of Campaigns and Communications and a member of the senior management group. He previously worked for Consumers International, a global (development and campaigning) NGO comprised of 240 consumer groups from 110 countries.
Prior to his move to the UK, Allan Asher was deputy chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the national competition and consumer body and energy regulator.
Allan Asher, a barrister and a solicitor of the Australian High Court, is also a board member of the Office of Fair Trading. He is also chair of the British Standards Institute, Consumer Policy Committee.
Sheila Page (Trustee)
Sheila Page was a Research Fellow, Overseas Development Institute, London, from 1982 until retirement in 2005. Before that, she was at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford, 1972, and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, 1972-82.
Her current research interests include how and why developing countries participate in international negotiations and regional trading arrangements among developing countries and between developing countries and developed, and trade relations between developed and developing countries, including Special and Differential treatment (SDT) and EU-ACP arrangements.
Her most recent reports are on special and differential treatment in the WTO, the potential poverty impact of the Doha Agenda and Understanding the Impact of Cotton Subsidies on Developing Countries. She has also advised developing countries in multilateral and regional negotiations.
Her publications include Special and Differential Treatment for Developing Countries in the WTO, with Peter Kleen (2005), Developing countries in GATT/WTO Negotiations (2002), Regionalism among Developing Countries (2000), World Commodity Prices: Still a Problem for Developing Countries? How Developing Countries Trade (1994), World Trade Reform: do Developing Countries Gain or Lose? (1994), Trade, Finance and Developing Countries (1989).
Beatrice Dove-Edwin (Trustee)
Beatrice Dove-Edwin is a Senior Trade Policy Advisor in the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Sierra Leone, on assignment by the Commonwealth Secretariat, London. As the Director of Policy, Planning and Research in the Ministry since 2004, she provides policy and legal advice on all aspects of international trade policy, regional trade policy and domestic trade policy coherence.
She qualified as a Barrister in the UK in 1988. From 1995 to 2003, she progressed from Staff Lawyer to Programme Director at the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD), providing legal advice and assistance to intergovernmental agencies, government departments and international NGOs.
Her areas of expertise include international trade law, international environmental law and policy, natural resource management, maritime law and shipping. Her other skills include project management, lecturing and training, and workshop/seminar facilitation.
She has written/contributed to books and articles on international trade/international environmental law issues.
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