Julien Chaisse is an award-winning Professor at the City University of Hong Kong, School of Law. Dr. Chaisse is a world-renowned expert on international economic law (trade, investment, and tax), cyberlaw, and international dispute resolution. His work has garnered wide academic recognition and has been cited by international courts/tribunals as well as U.S. Courts. Dr. Chaisse currently sits on the editorial boards of several high impact academic journals, and is Editor-in-Chief of the Asia Pacific Law Review. He is the recent recipient of the 10th Smith-Lowenfeld Prize from the International Arbitration Club of New York.

Dr. Chaisse is also an accomplished senior arbitrator—several of his adjudications have been reported in the international press. He is frequently called upon as an expert witness in international trade/investment litigation and arbitration, advise international organizations, governments, law firms, and private investors on private/public international law issues (e.g. concessions contracts, special economic zones, investment structuring, state and international organization immunities, and WTO accession), and has assisted over twenty jurisdictions in drafting legislation. Dr. Chaisse is currently President and Chair of the Asia Pacific FDI Network (APFN), which is the most important organization in the region that focuses on researching foreign direct investment and facilitating cooperation among over 100 scholars and 50 institutions.

Christina Pak specializes in international development finance and law and policy reform. She is currently a Principal Counsel of the Asian Development Bank and is responsible for managing the Office of General Counsel’s Law and Policy Reform Program which designs, processes, and implements technical assistance projects directly to developing member countries relating to legal and judicial reforms. She oversees a diverse portfolio in the areas of environment protection and climate change, gender equality, private sector development, public-private partnerships and digital economy.

In her own technical assistance projects, Christina specializes in dispute resolution and been assisting various countries in the South Pacific region accede to the New York Convention and put in place implementing arbitration law, including Fiji, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tonga and also assisted Uzbekistan with its new Law on International Commercial Arbitration. She also leads ADB’s judicial capacity building programs on commercial and environmental and climate change adjudication, as well assisting judiciaries in more effective and efficient handling of gender-based violence cases.

Christina also serves as ADB’s Accountability Mechanism Policy Counsel and the Office of the General Counsel’s technical assistance, partnerships and knowledge focal points and is a member of ADB’s Gender Equality, Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management, Environment and Governance Thematic Groups.

In her previous role as a project counsel at ADB, she worked on complex multi-sector projects across the Central West, Southeast and East Asia regions.

Prior to joining ADB, Christina was a legal counsel and vice president for markets and international banking at a major UK bank in Singapore and a finance associate at a large law firm in New York City.

Christina is a Steering Committee Member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law and a Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. She is a US-qualified lawyer, admitted in the States of New York and New Jersey.