Liesl Harewood Mulholland is originally from the Caribbean, born and raised in Guyana. She later migrated to Barbados where she worked with the Barbados Coalition of Service Industries to facilitate the island’s increase in services exports across the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), including Guyana and Suriname, and into the European Union. 
 

Experience & Know-How

She developed, organised and led more than 20 trade missions to countries in the Americas, Africa and the Caribbean. From 2006 to 2008, she organized trade missions for Barbadian businesses across the Caribbean to markets that included: Guyana, Suriname, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Curacao, Saint Lucia and Miami. 

From 2013, she has organized and facilitated trade missions from Nova Scotia to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) members, including Guyana, Suriname, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Saint Lucia and the wider Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS).

Liesl has worked with Canadian multi-sector companies as well as services companies in the professional services, ICT, education and training sectors with a central role in advancing and coordinating the trade development agenda in Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canada. From 2013 until 2016, she also developed and maintained relationships with the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) as the Private Sector Liaison Officer (PSLO) for Nova Scotia to the World Bank Group, tracking and disseminating opportunities from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Caribbean Development Bank, the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to companies who were interested in pursuing international development projects through the IFIs. Liesl worked closely and partnered with the PSLO for Newfoundland and Labrador on a number of these initiatives.

Atlantic Canadian businesses have a unique resource with Liesl’s PSLO’s knowledge as she remains connected to the PSLO network and continues to facilitate opportunities on behalf of clients with the IFIs. During her stint as PSLO, appointed by the World Bank Group, Liesl helped Nova Scotian companies gain access to international financial institutions’ business opportunities, services and knowledge.

She can navigate this complex landscape on behalf of the trade mission delegates in the target markets of Guyana and Suriname, as required to expand their businesses. With an extensive network of contacts within the Caribbean Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank system, as well as business intermediary organizations such as chambers of commerce, business and trade associations, and investment promotion agencies.

Liesl is our navigator and marries her knowledge of the Nova Scotian and Atlantic Canadian business culture with that of the Caribbean environment as she successfully continues to live and work in both markets.
 

Certifications

Liesl is a Certified International Trade Professional (CITP) and holds a Bachelors of Law in European Commercial Law with French from the Universities of Sussex (UK) and Toulouse (France), a Masters in Diplomacy, Law and Global Change from Coventry University (UK). She is fluent in English and French and has a basic working knowledge of Spanish and German.