September 11-12, 2000
San Francisco, CA

Speaker Biographies

Catherine Kessedjian

Deputy Secretary General
Hague Conference on Private International Law, The Netherlands

Professor Catherine Kessedjian is Deputy Secretary General of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, on secondment from the Université de Bourgogne in France. She is in charge of the preparation and monitoring of the negotiations for the proposed world-wide Convention on jurisdiction and judgments. She is also in charge of commercial matters, including electronic commerce. She currently acts as mediator or arbitrator in a selected number of transnational disputes.

Prior to joining the Hague Conference, Catherine Kessedjian taught International Business Transactions, European Business Law, including competition law, international dispute resolution and participated in several specialized seminars in international litigation and international commercial arbitration. She was the Director of the European Law Center of the Université de Bourgogne and of a post-graduate program for International Business Lawyers. She was a practising attorney in Paris from 1982 to end of 1998, mainly focusing on transnational litigation.

She received her legal education from the University of Paris (Doctorate) and the University of Pennsylvania Law School (LLM)