Tigara Group's founder and principal. Formerly Senior Trade Policy Analyst at Global Affairs Canada, Trade Policy Analyst at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and Market Development Officer at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Now Florida-based, working across three disciplines under one boutique practice.
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Specific deal names, country pairs, and government clients are withheld out of respect for confidentiality. Outcome categories and durations are real.
15+
Years across trade policy, market development, and cross-border commerce
4+
Years as Trade Policy Analyst, Canadian Food Inspection Agency
5+
Months as Senior Trade Policy Analyst, Global Affairs Canada (multi-country agreement negotiation)
2
Formal credentials: Executive Certificate in Conflict Management; Certified Family Mediator
Born in Texas to Lebanese parents and raised across two more continents — first in Cote d'Ivoire in West Africa, then in Ontario, Canada. Cross-cultural is not a brochure word for me; it's the climate I grew up in. I learned trust before I learned trade — at three different dinner tables on three different continents.
I prepared seriously for law school. While studying for the LSAT, I worked inside the private legal sector to understand the daily texture of the work. The texture told me clearly: the practice I was preparing for would not let me help people in the way I most wanted to. I left.
Trade policy and international relations took me in the other direction — toward the rooms where market access is written, where exporters meet new geographies, where parties find common ground or do not. The work was harder than law and, for me, more useful.
I moved my family to Florida in 2023 and began building Tigara Group deliberately small. Three disciplines: Business Development and Market Entry, Growth Intelligence, and Mediation and Conflict Resolution. The thread between them is the same one I noticed at three dinner tables three decades ago. My standing phrase is “practical results, no flush.” I mean it.
If any of this resonates — a market expansion, an AI integration question, or a dispute that deserves resolution before it becomes litigation — I would welcome a conversation.
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