WASHINGTON – The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), the global voice of the tech sector, today announced the addition of Ed Brzytwa as director of global policy for localization, trade, and multilateral affairs, following a three-year stint as the director for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) affairs at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). Brzytwa, who served as the lead policy advisor for USTR on key issues arising in the APEC forum, starts in his new role at ITI this week.

“Throughout his career, Ed has demonstrated incredible leadership and played a critical role in advancing U.S. trade and investment policy interests,” said ITI Senior Vice President for Global Policy Josh Kallmer. “His impressive background will be an asset to ITI, providing depth to ITI’s global work on trade and economic policy issues, including those taking place at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and in APEC.”

Brzytwa’s work at ITI will primarily focus on leading ITI’s efforts to craft and pursue both global and market-specific approaches to ensuring free cross-border data flows and addressing government policies relating to the localization of data, products, services, and business activities.

“The proliferation of localization policies is a global problem with significant impact on the ICT industry and ICT users,” said Brzytwa. “I’m thrilled to join the ITI team and am ready to lead ITI’s critical work on addressing the wide range of localization policies in use and under development.”

Prior to serving as the director of APEC affairs at USTR, Brzytwa was a U.S. negotiator on non-tariff barriers to trade issues in the Doha Development Agenda negotiations at the WTO, first at the Department of Commerce and then at USTR. He earned a Master’s degree at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna as a Fulbright grant recipient, a Master’s degree at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (now the Middlebury Institute of International Studies), and a Bachelor’s degree in the Classics at the College of the Holy Cross.

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