Joel Blank has served as the Intellectual Property Attaché at the American Embassy in Beijing since April, 2013. Prior to his current posting, he was an attorney in the Office of Public and External Affairs at the United States Patent and Trademark Office specializing in China IPR enforcement. Between 2004 and 2012, Mr. Blank was an international attorney-adviser at the US Department of Commerce. He is a graduate of Drake University and American University’s Washington College of Law where he served as editor-in-chief of the American University International Law Review.

Evan Williams is serving a long-term detail as the United States Department of Justice Regional Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Coordinator (IPLEC) for Asia. He is based at the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong, where he coordinates and delivers intellectual property rights prosecutorial and judicial training and technical assistance throughout the East Asia Pacific region to foreign law enforcement partners of the United States. Prior to accepting the IPLEC position, he served as Senior Counsel with the Justice Department’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS), where he specialized in the criminal prosecution of intellectual property offenses. Before joining CCIPS, he served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, and before joining the Justice Department, as an Assistant District Attorney in the New York County District Attorney’s Office, where in both offices he prosecuted a wide variety of violent and white-collar crimes. He is a graduate of Columbia Law School and Harvard College.