Team

Ambassador Demetrios Marantis has deep expertise in helping public and private companies integrate geopolitical, regulatory, sustainability, and philanthropic priorities into their strategy and risk management. A former Acting and Deputy United States Trade Representative and member of President Obama’s Cabinet, Ambassador Marantis brought his extensive experience negotiating trade agreements with China and throughout Asia and Africa to senior executive roles at J.P. Morgan Chase, Visa, and Square. He currently runs a global geopolitical advisory firm, sits on several advisory boards, and speaks on global trade and other geopolitical issues. Based in Washington, DC, Ambassador Marantis received his undergraduate degree in public and international affairs from Princeton University in 1990 and his JD from Harvard Law School in 1993.

Ambassador Marantis served as the Global Head of Corporate Responsibility for J.P. Morgan Chase from 2021 to 2023, where he led a global team of over 400 professionals that oversaw the firm’s philanthropic initiatives, government relations, sustainability, and public policy. He served as Senior Vice President, Global Head of Government Engagement at Visa, from 2015 to 2021, where he developed proactive strategies to engage and partner with governments across the globe to advance the growth of electronic payments. Prior to Visa, Marantis founded and led the government relations and public policy team at Square, a high-growth international fintech.

Among his many accomplishments, Marantis concluded and secured congressional passage of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, designed and led negotiations for the Trans Pacific Partnership, spearheaded trade negotiations with China as well as India, Indonesia, Vietnam, throughout Africa, and negotiated the first-ever agreement in APEC to reduce tariffs on environmental goods.

Marantis also spent five years as the Chief International Trade Counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee. He worked in Hanoi for two years as the Chief Legal Advisor for the U.S.-Vietnam Trade Council, served as Associate General Counsel at USTR from 1998 to 2002, and worked in the Brussels and DC offices of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld from 1993 to 1998.

Scott Oakley is Managing Director of the National Foreign Trade Council Foundation.

Scott Oakley previously served as Acting Head of Border Strategy at the United Kingdom’s Cabinet Office, where he led post-Brexit border strategy for goods imports.

As a Senior Policy Advisor in the UK Government, he oversaw campaigns to prepare British exporters for EU exit and the implementation of risk-based border controls on EU imports. He also served as a Senior Analyst for Cross-Whitehall Intelligence and Data Gathering.

More recently, Scott received the McCourt Scholar Award to pursue a Master of Public Policy at Georgetown’s University McCourt School of Public Policy. While pursuing his master’s, he was a Fellow at the National Foreign Trade Council, supporting NFTC’s trade and tax portfolios.

Scott comes from Manchester, England, and holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oxford.

Hua C. Wang is Executive Director for Global Innovation Forum (GIF) at the National Foreign Trade Council Foundation.

As GIF’s Executive Director, Hua engages an international network of small, minority and women-led businesses, nonprofit leaders and government officials to improve the trade and digital policy landscapes. She oversees the development and execution of GIF’s strategy to facilitate more inclusive access to the global marketplace. She amplifies the voice of innovators and entrepreneurs in public policy discussions domestically and with international organizations including the World Trade Organization and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum.

Hua previously led a top technology accelerator in Alabama with the 15 startups collectively raising $20 million in funding and generating $11 million in revenue. She also founded SmartBridge Health, a cancer telemedicine startup, during which time she served an entrepreneur in residence at Start-Up Chile, the Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre and the Washington, DC-based Halcyon Incubator.

Prior to entrepreneurship, Hua worked as a private equity attorney at Proskauer and K&L Gates, in-house counsel at Cisco Systems and a global scholar at the Kauffman Foundation.

After graduating from Duke University, Hua worked as an investment banking analyst at Lehman Brothers and a healthcare strategy consultant at Accenture. She is also a graduate of Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law.