About Oliver

I have been working at the British Embassy in Washington since June 2006 as First Secretary for trade policy, agriculture and business affairs. I cover a range of issues including WTO negotiations, trade disputes, US domestic agricultural policy, investment policy and the extraterritorial reach of US laws.

Before coming to Washington, I headed the Multilateral Trade Negotiations team in the Department of Trade and Industry in London, focussing on the current round of WTO talks, the Doha Development Agenda. Prior to joining the civil service, I practised as a solicitor at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in London.

I am a self-confessed trade geek. As an undergraduate I specialised in British nineteenth-century social and economic policies and went on to study Irish and British protectionist thought during my M.Phil. in Political Thought and Intellectual History at Cambridge University.

I am married with two children and am one of a small handful of people in Washington, DC who commute to work on a bike.