Board of Directors

Bios

Andre Barlow, Board Treasurer

Andre Barlow, a Partner at Doyle, Barlow and Mazard, LLP, focuses on all aspects of Antitrust, International Trade and Hospitality Law.

A seasoned antitrust attorney, Mr. Barlow has extensive experience in antitrust enforcement matters before the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and state enforcement agencies, as well as in complex commercial litigation involving the federal and state antitrust laws and other commercial matters, and represents clients in investigations by federal and state antitrust regulatory agencies.  Mr. Barlow represents clients in investigations by federal and state antitrust regulatory agencies and advises clients on issues related to mergers, and premerger notifications both inside and outside the United States. Mr. Barlow also counsels clients in complex white collar criminal cases relating to antitrust conspiracies. He has extensive experience in internal investigations and advising on compliance programs.

Mr. Barlow currently addresses the legal needs of a number of restaurants, bars, grocery stores, retail stores and other businesses in the hospitality industry.  In addition, he also represents domestic and international clients with respect to anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations.

Mr. Barlow was formerly a trial attorney with Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, and previously an economist with the Foreign Agricultural Service of the Department of Agriculture.

Mr. Barlow received is J.D. from George Washington University, his MA from George Mason University and his BA from West Virginia University.  He and his wife, Christina, live in Northern Virginia with their three daughters.  They are dedicated to the well being of their children as well as that of youth in general and have volunteered their time to mentor adolescent girls improve life and academic skills.  Mr. Barlow coaches youth and middle school girls’ basketball in the Northern Virginia area and has provided administrative
support to various girls soccer teams.

Richard F. Casey

Richard “Rick” Casey has served as President of Capitol Representation, Inc. since forming the company in 1987.  The firm represents select national associations and corporations in their meeting site selections throughout the world, contract negotiations, space requirements, security issues and conflict resolution. Their offices are located in Basye, Virginia.

Prior to the formation of Capitol Representation, Mr. Casey held executive sales and marketing positions in corporate offices of major hotel corporations and representation firms since 1979. He has done virtually all aspects of hotel operations, food and beverage, development and has owned and operated a 10,000 SF restaurant and in-house catering facility in Old Town Alexandria.

Through strong personal relationships, Mr. Casey has maintained a high profile with top Association and Corporate executives in the Washington, DC market for over thirty-two years.  His extensive background in the hotel and resort industry has resulted in a solid base of blue chip “members”, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Casey holds a degree in Business Administration and Hospitality Management from James Madison University, where he graduated with honors.  He has been a member of the Executive Advisory Board of the School of Hospitality, Sport and Recreation Management at JMU since 1988 and has served as Chair of the Board for the past 18 years. He also sits on the Executive Board of Associated Luxury Hotels. In addition, he founded a number of charity events to benefit young kids in need, including Fore the Kids with the Alexandria Boy’s and Girl’s Club, Santa Claus Yacht Club and St. Patrick’s Foundation.

A native of Covington, Virginia, Mr. Casey “grew up” in the hospitality business at the Homestead and Greenbrier Resorts where he began his career at age 14 as a musician and “walker”. In his previous life, he was a professional performing musician, a building contractor and started his first two small businesses at age 18. Rick’s travel article “My Favorite Places” has been published over 100 times.

Mr. Casey resides in Mt. Jackson, Virginia and Beaufort-By-The-Sea, NC.

Banu Demiralp, Board Chair

Banu Demiralp is Co-founder and President of Anka Rising. Ms. Demiralp is an analyst with over 10 years of experience in international trade law and non-profit fundraising. Before co-founding Anka Rising, as an international trade professional, Ms. Demiralp drew on her experience in international trade and private sector development to monitor and analyze U.S. foreign and trade policy for public and private sector clients. Ms. Demiralp has extensive knowledge of U.S., EU, Chinese, Russian, Turkish and Indian foreign and trade affairs. In addition to international trade, her areas of expertise include: donor and program management; client relations; post-conflict and fragile state market research; reconstruction and stabilization policy; emergency preparedness; and research, analysis and evaluation of human trafficking. Ms. Demiralp is a native speaker of Turkish, and also speaks intermediate French and basic Russian. She received her Masters in Peace Operations Policy from George Mason University’s School of Public Policy in Arlington, Virginia and her B.A. in History from Hope College in Holland, Michigan.

Berna Demiralp, Board Secretary

Dr. Berna Demiralp is an applied microeconomist with expertise in labor and demographic economics.  She is a Senior Research Associate at Optimal Solutions Group, LLC, a small public policy research firm in College Park, MD.  In her role as the Project Director on multiple projects, she provides critical direction and oversight of projects as well as strategies for mitigating challenges and risks.  She also leads efforts in several activities of program monitoring and evaluation, including development of evaluation framework and metrics, survey instruments, and quantitative analysis.  Prior to joining Optimal Solutions Group, she was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA.

Dr. Demiralp’s research interests include occupational choice, particularly the decision to become an entrepreneur and the informational problems in various aspects of the labor market.  She has studied the impact of moral hazard on workers’ occupational choices, the importance of liquidity constraints in the transition to entrepreneurship, the impact of incomplete information on the return to migration, and the role of imperfect information regarding Social Security rules in individuals’ retirement decisions, among other topics.  In her research, she has utilized a wide variety of microeconometric methods, including simulated maximum likelihood, and quasi-experimental methods of instrumental variable estimation and propensity score matching.

She has published in peer-reviewed journals, including European Economics Review, Journal of Macroeconomics, Journal of Economics and Finance.  She has presented at numerous conferences, including the Econometric Society North American Summer Meetings, Southern Economic Association Annual Meetings and the Eastern Economic Association Annual Conference.  Dr. Demiralp has received the Old Dominion University Summer Research Fellowship Award, and her research has received financial support from the Michigan Retirement Research Center, Center for Survey Research at SUNY-Stony Brook and Old Dominion University College of Business and Public Administration.

Dr. Demiralp is a staunch advocate of human and animal rights.  She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, and her B.A. in Economics from Davidson College, Davidson, NC.

Janna Lipman, Board Vice Chair

Janna Lipman is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Anka Rising. Ms. Lipman is a manager with 10 years of experience in strategic communications and stakeholder management. Prior to co-founding Anka Rising, she provided management and communications consulting services to public and private sector clients, leveraging her expertise in strategy and conflict resolution to assist clients in analyzing their programs and achieving their goals. Her specialties include strategic communications and outreach; stakeholder management; facilitation, program analysis; and research, analysis and evaluation of human trafficking, transnational crime and corruption, and international policing. Ms. Lipman has traveled and worked extensively in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Europe, Central and South America, and Asia. She is fluent in French and speaks basic Spanish. She received her Masters in Peace Operations Policy from George Mason University’s School of Public Policy in Arlington, Virginia; Graduate Certificates in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis & Resolution; and her BBA in Hospitality and Tourism Management and BA in French from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Louise Shelley

Dr. Louise Shelley is a University Professor at George Mason University. She is in the School of Public Policy and directs the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) that she founded. She is a leading expert on the relationship among terrorism, organized crime and corruption as well as human trafficking, transnational crime and terrorism with a particular focus on the former Soviet Union. She also specializes in illicit financial flows and money laundering.

Dr. Shelley received her undergraduate degree cum laude from Cornell University in Penology and Russian literature. She holds an M.A. in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania. She studied at the Law Faculty of Moscow State University on IREX and Fulbright Fellowships and holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. She held a Fulbright and researched and taught on crime issues in Mexico. She has also taught on transnational crime in Italy. She is the recipient of the Guggenheim, NEH, IREX, Kennan Institute, and Fulbright Fellowships and received a MacArthur Grant to establish the Russian Organized Crime Study Centers. In 1992, she received the Scholar-Teacher prize of American University, the top academic award of the university.

She is the author of Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective (Cambridge 2010), Policing Soviet Society (Routledge, 1996), Lawyers in Soviet Worklife and Crime and Modernization, as well as numerous articles and book chapters on all aspects of transnational crime and corruption. She is also an editor (with Sally Stoecker) of Human Traffic and Transnational Crime: Eurasian and American Perspectives. She serves on the boards of Demokratizatsiya: the Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, and the European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, Global Crime and The International Annals of Criminology. She was elected to the Board of Directors of the International Society of Criminology for the years 1999-2004.

Since 1995, Dr. Shelley has run programs in Russia, Ukraine and Georgia with leading specialists on the problems of organized crime and corruption. She has also been the principal investigator of large-scale projects on money laundering from Russia, Ukraine and Georgia and of training of law enforcement persons on the issue of trafficking in persons. She has testified before the House Committee on International Relations Committee, the Helsinki Commission, the House Banking Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on transnational crime, human trafficking and the links between transnational crime, financial crime and terrorism. Professor Shelley served on the Global Agenda Council on Illicit Trade of the World Economic Forum and was the first co-chair of its Council on Organized Crime where she continues to serve. She has spoken at various international fora and at many universities both in the United States and abroad on transnational crime and corruption. Additionally, she appears on television and radio, including appearances on CNN, NPR’s Marketplace, PBS, A&E, the History Channel and 60 Minutes.