2022 SupChina Women’s Conference

Merit E. Janow is an internationally recognized expert in international trade and investment. She has extensive experience in academia, government and business, and has been deeply involved with the Asia-Pacific region for her entire life.

Janow became Dean of the faculty of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) in July 2013.  SIPA is a leading school of international and public affairs in the United States, with more than 1,300 graduate students and 75 full time faculty. As Dean, she has strengthened the school by launching new programs and initiatives in the areas of technology and public policy – with a focus on cyber security and the digital economy – entrepreneurship and policy, and central banking and financial policy.” She also has grown SIPA’s faculty; supported the creation of new research centers; and completed a capital campaign and inaugurated SIPA’s second and most ambitious capital campaign.

For the past 25 years, Dean Janow has been a professor at both SIPA and Columbia Law School. She teaches graduate courses in the digital economy, international trade and investment law and policy, comparative antitrust law, and China in the global economy.  She has held a number of leadership positions at the University.  She is co-director of the APEC Study Center at Columbia Business School and previously served as Chair of the Committee for Socially Responsible Investing which oversees the proxy voting of shares owned by the Columbia University endowment.  Janow has written three books and numerous articles and frequently speaks before business, policy, and academic audiences around the world.

Professor Janow has had three periods of government service. In December 2003, while at Columbia University, she was elected as one of the seven Members of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Appellate Body, which is the court of final appeal for adjudicating trade disputes between the 154 member nations of the WTO. She was the only North American member and the first female to serve on the Appellate Body. In the course of her four years of service, she reviewed more than 30 appeals covering a diverse range of trade disputes, including technology, subsidies, agriculture, investment and trade remedies. From 1997-2000, Janow served as the Executive Director of the first international antitrust advisory committee to the Attorney General and Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust of the US Justice Department. The key recommendations were implemented on an international basis and led to the establishment of the International Competition Network (ICN).  From 1989 to 1993, prior to joining Columbia, Janow served as Deputy Assistant USTR for Japan and China in the Executive Office of the President. In this capacity she was responsible for developing, coordinating, and implementing U.S. trade policies; devising the U.S. negotiating strategies towards Japan and China; and leading the negotiations for a dozen trade agreements.

Janow has had extensive corporate and nonprofit board experience. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.   She is an inaugural member of the international advisory council of China’s sovereign fund, the China Investment Corporation (CIC) for the past 12 years.  Early in her career, Janow was a corporate lawyer specializing in cross-border mergers and acquisitions with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in New York. She grew up in Tokyo, Japan, and is fluent in Japanese. She has a JD from Columbia Law School where she was a Stone Scholar and a BA in Asian Studies from the University of Michigan.