MERRITT TODD COOKE

Merritt T. (“Terry”) Cooke is the Founder and Managing Director of GC³ Strategy inc., an international consultancy fostering bio/life science technology transactions and partnerships between the US and Asia. As the top three worldwide holders of foreign exchange (exceeding a trillion dollars overall), Japan, China, and Taiwan have increasing political and economic incentives to diversify and invest abroad, particularly in emerging technology sectors. GC³ Strategy’s mission is to assist US companies in forging these partnerships.

Terry is also the Founder of Greater Philadelphia Global Partnership (GP2) BioResponse, a non-profit-in-formation designed to highlight the use of Information Technology tools to promote international coordination and preparedness in countering threats from SARS, HIV-AIDS and bio-terrorism.

Terry advises the University of Pennsylvania’s Lauder Institute (The Wharton School) as well as the City of Philadelphia in their global business outreach. He also serves on several boards.

Over the past year, Terry has been a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, PA. His policy research is an ongoing, multi-year project focusing on the commercial and policy implications of the large capital and foreign exchange flows into, and accelerating market integration between, Taiwan and China, with particular emphasis on the Information Technology sector. Elsewhere in the public policy arena, he has recently joined the RAND Corporation as a Senior Policy Advisor to their Center for Asia-Pacific Policy.

During the fourteen previous years, Terry held progressively more responsible positions within the U.S. & Foreign Commercial Service at world centers in Asia (Taipei, Tokyo, Shanghai) and Europe (Berlin), including being the senior commercial representative of the United States in Taiwan and at the U.S. Embassy Office in Berlin. This work involved consensus building with counterpart governments; with the CEO level in industry; and with top-levels of the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government. These positions required a variety of skills in complex, cross-cultural decision-making environments: transactional skills in major projects and in bilateral negotiations; policy and fund-raising skills in organizing international conferences and trade promotion events; and administrative skills in managing substantial budgets and staffs. In December 2001, Terry was recommended by the U.S. Department of Commerce for promotion to the Senior Foreign Commercial Service (the Senior Executive Service of the U.S. Foreign Service and of the U.S. Department of Commerce). Following President Bush’s nomination of Terry to the U.S. Senate in March 2002, he was confirmed as a member of the Senior Foreign Service in June 2002.

For the past twenty-five years, Terry has worked to combine constructively the perspectives of government, business and academe, with particular emphasis on issues of globalization and growing commercial interdependence. This effort grew directly out of his interest in ethics and cross-cultural studies during university and graduate school. This brought him to international commerce, which, over these decades, has outstripped politics as the world’s main bridge of global interchange.