Monica Hardy Whaley was named the President of the National Center for APEC in January of 2009. She served as NCAPEC's Deputy Director at its founding in 1994 and as the Executive Director since November of 2002. Monica is responsible for management of NCAPEC's policy and administrative staff, membership, fundraising and fiscal management, and serves as the public spokesperson and representative of the National Center for APEC.
Prior to assuming her responsibilities at the National Center for APEC, Monica was the Interim President and Program Director of the Washington Council on International Trade (WCIT), the premier trade policy organization in the most trade-dependent U.S. state. WCIT served as the coordinating organization for the US hosting of the 1993 APEC Meetings.
Monica holds Bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and French from the University of Santa Clara, and studied in Paris at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Pô).
She is an Alternate Member of the U.S. APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC), Chair of the US-APEC Business Coalition, as well as being a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy. She serves on a number of Advisory Boards, including those for Seattle University Albers School of Business-Department of Economics, the Seattle World Affairs Council and the Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle. She is also very active in local organizations in support of children's charities, school and community groups.

Marija Zivanovic-Smith is enterprise vice president of Communications and Public Affairs, including Government, Community and University Relations, Corporate Communications, and the Employer Brand for NCR Corporation. As champion of NCR’s culture and brand identity, she also oversees the NCR Foundation providing grants that help people become self-sufficient in communities where NCR employees and customers live and work around the globe.

In her time at NCR, she has held a series of positions with increasing responsibility, covering government relations, leading the corporate marketing team, leading corporate real estate and architecting NCR’s strategic global footprint, launching NCR’s integrated global external affairs experience and brand, driving sales enablement, and overseeing digital marketing and the company’s strategic brand platform. She also served as the chief of staff to NCR’s Chairman and CEO Bill Nuti, until his retirement in April 2018.

Marija also leads global government programs for NCR, having corporate responsibility for global public policy and regulatory issues that impact the company. Her team led multiple incentive negotiations across Asia, Europe, Latin America and the United States, lobbying for pension funding relief legislation and driving leadership across many aspects of technology, retail and fintech policy discussions. She also led NCR’s global effort around its emerging markets initiative.

Ms. Zivanovic-Smith is one of three U.S. representatives nominated by the White House to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Business Advisory Council (ABAC). She also serves on the Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC) Board of Directors, the Advisory Board of Serbian Blockchain Initiative (SBI), the Forbes Communications Council, the City of Atlanta WEI Board, and is a trustee of the NCR Foundation. In 2009, she was invited by the U.S. Government to be a reviewer for the Recovery Act's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program and served as a board member for five years on the Women's Council on Energy and the Environment.

A graduate of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, she is a public policy strategist and corporate affairs and business development expert with global experience handling issues in information technology, innovation, energy, and trade policy.

Prior to NCR, Ms. Zivanovic-Smith served as the director of government affairs for GridPoint, a leading clean tech company, and held several governmental programs and public policy strategy roles for IBM. She worked as a member of the core team of strategists for IBM’s Energy & Utility future business and was responsible for policy and regulatory strategy for the company’s Intelligent Utility Network. She was also one of the founding members of IBM’s Emerging Policy Issues team. In 2006, she received IBM’s Ovation Award for Innovation in RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) Privacy Technology and Leadership.

She is fluent in Serbian and proficient in Italian and French and lives in Alexandria, VA with her husband and their two daughters.

Richard Cantor serves as Chief Risk Officer for Moody’s Corporation (MCO) and Chief Credit Officer for Moody’s Investors Service (MIS). Mr. Cantor was appointed Chief Risk Officer in 2009, and in this role he leads MCO’s global risk management function. As Chief Credit Officer for MIS, a position he has held since 2008, Mr. Cantor heads MIS’s Credit Strategy and Standards Group, which is responsible for the rating agency’s global credit strategy and thematic research, the quality and consistency of its ratings across regions and sectors, and the methodologies applied in the determination of ratings. Mr. Cantor was appointed by the U.S. State Department to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Business Advisory Council in 2015. Mr. Cantor joined Moody’s in 1997 from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he served as Assistant Vice President in the Research Group and was Staff Director at the Discount Window. Prior to the Federal Reserve, Mr. Cantor taught Economics at UCLA and Ohio State and has taught on an adjunct basis at the business schools of Columbia University and New York University.

Laura Lane joined UPS on November 1, 2011 as President, Global Public Affairs. She is responsible for all worldwide government affairs activities for UPS in the over 220 countries and territories it serves.

Prior to joining UPS, Laura was Managing Director and Head of International Government Affairs at Citigroup. Laura directed the day-to-day advocacy efforts of Citi’s international government affairs team.
Before joining Citi, Ms. Lane was VP for Global Public Policy with Time Warner where she represented the company on the federal and international levels on all issues affecting Time Warner and its divisions.

In her government career, Ms. Lane served as a trade negotiator in the Executive Office of the President in the United States Trade Representative’s Office (USTR). In this role, she negotiated market access commitments on trade in services with China as part of its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and served as U.S. negotiator on the first-ever WTO Financial Services Agreement. She also managed bilateral trade affairs with the Middle East and the Mediterranean countries.

Before joining USTR, Ms. Lane served in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1990-1997. She worked in the Trade Policy and Programs office in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1995-1997. She served as the State Department representative on the US Basic Telecommunications negotiating team, which concluded the first-ever global agreement on basic telecommunications in 1996. Ms. Lane also worked in the State Department Operations Center from 1994-1995 as watch officer under Secretary Warren Christopher.

In her overseas assignments, Ms. Lane was the economic and political-military affairs officer at the American Embassy in Kigali, Rwanda from 1993-1994. She led the evacuation effort of American citizens from Rwanda in April 1994 with the outbreak of the civil war and returned in August as political advisor to U.S. forces providing humanitarian relief to Rwandan refugees. Laura subsequently delivered a TED talk on her experiences on “When to Follow your Heart and Write your own Rules” and shared her perspectives on the Rwandan genocide in the PBS/Frontline documentary “Ghosts of Rwanda.” Ms. Lane also served as economic and consular officer in Bogota, Colombia from 1990-1992. In her state department career, she was the recipient of two Superior Honor awards and a Meritorious Honor award.

Ms. Lane is also Chairman of the Board for the Coalition of Service Industries (CSI), Vice Chairman of the Board of the German American Business Council and a member of the Board of the Atlantic Council, US Chamber of Commerce and the Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital. She has also been appointed as Vice Chairman of the President’s Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa (PAC-DBIA) and Johnson & Johnson’s Global Public Health Advisory Forum. Finally, in 2014 and again in 2016, she also served as Corporate Chair of the Global Partnership Initiative for Refugees International.

Ms. Lane was born in Evanston, Illinois but grew up in Frankfurt, West Germany. She graduated summa cum laude from Loyola University with a Bachelor’s degree in political science and history and summa cum laude from Georgetown University with a Master of Science degree in Foreign Service.