Light Years IP

Ron Layton

Founder & Chief Executive

Ron Layton has combined successful careers in economic development and IP business to design the Light Years IP vision of engaging IP business techniques to reduce poverty and secure income for poor people through export trade in developing countries. Since forming LYIP as an NGO in 1999, Ron Layton has been creating mechanisms for poor producers in developing countries to improve the amount and security of export income from commodities and finished products. This process utilizes all forms of IP to assert the right to income from intangible values created and owned by poor countries. LYIP also assists with the products of innovation, including inventions, tribal names and all forms of designs, some traditional and mostly modern.

Ron’s has experience implementing projects in IP Value Capture opportunity in more than 20 African countries. The impact upon poverty has affected millions of African farmers and producers.

Ron has acted as IP consultant to producer groups, exporters and tribal groups, to businesses in fair trade and sustainable development, to the World Bank and the USPTO, and to Governments as different as Ethiopia, Niue and Bermuda. In 2004, the World Bank published a book titled "Poor People’s Knowledge" that included coverage of his work on IP and Poverty Alleviating Trade. In February 2004, Ron was elected as a Global Fellow by the Ashoka Foundation, recognition as a leading social entrepreneur working on a global level.

Ron is educated in economics and mathematics and worked as lead economist on numerous development projects in more than 20 developing countries for UNDP, ADAB, SPC, the Commonwealth and many governments. He has specialized in Intellectual Property for 25 years and in Intellectual Property for Development for 15 of those years. He began in 1977-80, originating and implementing jurisdictional Intellectual Property solutions in developing countries with very limited and weak economies. He led a project covering analysis and development of jurisdictional Intellectual Property sector in several countries where IP produced over 60% of government income and over 80% of export income. To acquire direct understanding of the role of branding and other Intellectual Property in Trade, he added ten years of commercial experience in earning export income, successfully distributing film product and derivative consumer products to over 100 world markets.

• http://www.ashoka.org/fellow/2987

close

Pauline Tiffen

Director

Pauline has worked for academic institutions, mainstream and alternative business, the voluntary sector, co-operative and community and development organizations North and South, in advisory, executive and non-executive positions. She has demonstrated an exceptional ability to nurture cross-cultural economic exchange and to develop new forms of business over more than fifteen years of work in the alternative trading sector in traditional and non-traditional commodities.

Pauline was the founder of two pioneering fair trade companies: Cafedirect and The Day Chocolate Company, including the supply chain/farmer participation. From 1989-1997, she served as the Executive and Managing Director of Twin Trading, Ltd. Pauline was a Founding Board member of the International Federation of Alternative Trade (IFAT) and, since 2003, Board Member and adviser of the North American Fair Trade Federation, a network of 200 innovative Fair Trade businesses.

Since 2000 she has been an Operations Adviser to the World Bank, creating ways for primary producers and local financial institutions in Africa and Latin America to access financial products to hedge their exposure and risk. She has also been working at the WB and International Finance Corporation on corporate social responsibility and regional branding/marketing pilot projects in Central America.

Pauline holds a Master’s degree from the University of Michigan; is a Fulbright Scholar and has been awarded a MacArthur Foundation NGO Fellowship for her work in conflict in trade in Africa. Pauline is multi-lingual, and conducts workshops throughout Africa, teaching IP Value Capture.

close

Mohammed Garad

Senior Consultant

Attorney Mohammed Garad has over 30 year's experience in international trade promotion and business investment in development projects in developing countries, with particular emphasis in Africa.

Mohammed’s career has spanned international law and business with in-depth trade experience. He started his career in international trade at the Ethiopian Customs in 1973 where he was rapidly promoted into increasingly responsible positions from tax attorney to chief prosecutor; manager of customs import-export operations; and deputy commissioner. He was elected and served as President of the African Tax Administrators’ Association (ATAA) in 1982 under the auspices of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. In 1983 he was elected vice chairman of the Permanent Technical Committee at the Customs Cooperation Council (CCC) in Brussels, Belgium where he was one of the pioneers among international customs officers engaged in drafting the Harmonized System, which today has become the standard tariff nomenclature adapted by all countries.

He is an attorney whose legal career ranges from the prosecution of illicit traders in Ethiopia to teaching legal research in the United States and working as general counsel on major investment acquisitions in the Middle East. Mohammed is also a trade consultant who has been intimately connected to the coffee industry for years. He was closely involved in the determination and collection of the Ethiopian coffee surtax. In 1996, he played a pivotal role in convincing and organizing the Ethiopian Coffee Exporters Association to shift its booth from an obscure small stand to a large and visible promotional pavilion during every annual SCAA conference. He was managing Coffee Originals, a company in Alexandria, VA engaged in importing coffee from Ethiopia until he joined Light Years IP.

Mohammed served as Ethiopia’s Trade and Investment Counselor in Washington DC from 1993 to 2001, during which time he actively lobbied for the passage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) by providing vital trade facts and preparing testimonies to be presented before the US Congress and the Clinton Administration. During his diplomatic tenure, Mohammed played a major role in promoting Ethiopia’s exports to the United States and convincing many American business executives and Ethio-American entrepreneurs to invest in Ethiopia. He co-founded the Ethio-American Trade and Investment Counsel (EATIC) to create a unique public private enterprise to reach out and advocate for active bilateral trade and investment participation.

Educated in law at Haile Sellasie 1st University and Harvard Law Schools, Mohammed has dedicated most of his professional life to international trade and investment activity, with a passion for the promotion of Ethiopian coffee.

close

Alison Dressler

Project Manager

Alison has been working actively in international development for 5 years and holds a B.A. from George Washington University in Washington, DC in International Affairs with concentrations in International Development as well as Contemporary Cultures.

Alison is a lead contributor to the research and preparation of the Light Years IP Scoping Study funded by the UK government that analyzed the long-term economic impact of IP business strategies in 11 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa. The study includes 14 products unique to Africa that have the potential to bring income and economic security to producers in this region through employing IP business techniques. Alison is also a Caribbean analyst; her projects have analyzed IP value capture in Jamaica and other Caribbean countries.

She is engaged in workshop organization in Mali on West African textiles that teach the tools and mechanisms of IP Value capture. She is also analyzing projects in Ethiopia, Senegal, Namibia, Togo/Ghana.

Alison became committed to poverty alleviation at a young age after living in an indigenous community in Costa Rica where she worked with the community to implement development projects.

close

Ming-ru Chu

Project Manager

Ming-ru Chu, holds a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Urban and Regional Planning with an emphasis on International planning and an undergraduate degree from Washington University.

Ming contributed to the analysis of the long-term economic impact of IP business strategies in 11 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa. The study includes unique African products that have significant potential to bring income security to producers in this region by employing IP based business techniques. Following up on this study, Ming has performed feasibility studies in Mozambique and Uganda. Her work with cashew farmers in Mozambique and vanilla farmers in Uganda is facilitating the recognition that Ugandan vanilla farmers can significantly change their negotiating positions through IP Value capture business strategies.

Ming is also a lead researcher on IP Value Capture Scoping studies in the Caribbean, with OAS funded research. Her projects have identified and analyzed IP value capture potential in Grenada and Belize. She continues to manage projects in the Caribbean.

Before joining Light Years IP, Ming studied slums and slum improvement projects in Kenya, Tanzania and Brazil.

close