Our Instructors

Beth Peterson, President. BPE Trade Consultants, Inc. Beth has over 21 years of experience in the logistics and international transportation business. Prior to founding BPE, Beth was Vice President of Marketing for Open Harbor where she lead the company's marketing and solutions initiatives.

Beth also served as the Vice President of Product Strategy for Qiva, Inc., where she was responsible for the design and development of Qiva's suite of supply chain execution and international trade solutions targeted to the logistics market. Beth also managed Hewlett Packard's $7.5 billion-a-year U.S. import operations and CAT audit and worked at DHL Airways, Inc., as a logistics services manager.

Beth also offers domain expertise as a licensed customs broker. She is a CBP Trade Ambassador for the redesign of the Automated Commercial Environment and is a Western Regional Committee member for the America's Association of Exporters and Importers, and President of Women in International Trade, Northern California. Beth was awarded the Organization of Women in International Trade Member of the Year for 2006.

Julie Gibbs, Senior Consultant. BPE Trade Consultants, Inc. Julie has been a licensed customs broker with CBP for over 10 years. Prior to joining BPE, Julie was Director of Product Management and Professional Services at Ensenda, a carrier management and "last mile" logistics service provider. Her responsibilities included defining the product strategy for Ensenda's web-based transportation products in addition to implementation of all of Ensenda's customers.

Julie has also worked as a Product Manager at Open Harbor and was responsible for the design of the company's global trade management and customs clearance solutions, and has held positions at the Gap, Qiva, and Hewlett Packard. During her eight year tenure at Hewlett-Packard, she managed several Import Operations programs including Drawback and NAFTA.

Julie holds an M.B.A. from Santa Clara University and a B.A. in Business Economics from U.C. Santa Barbara.

Thomas Hyland, Vice President of Training, Global Customs Security Consulting, Inc. - Thomas Hyland's career includes international trade, land border inspection, air and vessel cargo, narcotics interdiction, training and development, negotiations, and international travel. He was an Advisor to the Governments of Macedonia, Bosnia and Croatia; he assessed their border port's causes of cargo delays and excessive smuggling. He trained the foreign Customs officers in strategies to address these problems. Mr. Hyland Managed the SFO Airport Customs Passenger Inspection teams and the SFO international cargo operations for nine years, and managed the U. S. Customs Pre-Clearance station in Vancouver, BC for eight years and implemented a number of initiatives with dramatic enforcement results. Additionally, Mr. Hyland managed the cargo operations at SeaTac International Airport. He has served at three land border inspection stations. Tom was named National Customs Officer of the year in 1993. Mr. Hyland completed Customs teaching assignments in Malaysia, Laos, and also in Central America. And he conducted security assessments in the Philippines, Thailand, China, Hong Kong, Australia, India, Sri Lanka and Haiti.

John Petrin, Vice President, Global Customs Security Consulting, Inc. - John Petrin's career includes cargo security management, officer training, investigations, enforcement and international travel. As a Customs Anti-Terrorism Coordinator he helped develop the Customs security training for the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. He directed an enforcement program that was a national leader in interceptions of violative trademarked and copyrighted goods, which resulted in the Commissioner's Citation for his team. He was Director of U. S. Customs Passenger Inspection at the San Francisco International Airport, which included working with the Airport Authority on the design of the new Federal Inspection facility. He trained Customs officers in fifteen countries to enhance their risk management principles as applied to contraband smuggling. He received the Secretary of the Treasury Award for his enforcement training efforts. As Vice President of GCSC he helped develop a state-of-the-art Command and Control Communications Center (C4) at the Port of Tacoma and worked on a similar project for the Port of Oakland. He was a member of an international team in Tanjung Priok (Jakarta), Indonesia charged with developing information technology solutions in support of international security initiatives. He participated on a cargo security assessment in Cartagena, Colombia. He has been involved in numerous C-TPAT security assessments for U.S. importers seeking C-TPAT membership and/or validation. This included visiting over 30 supply chain sites, both foreign and domestic, on behalf of these companies. He recently led a training team to Shanghai, China to conduct C-TPAT Third Party "Validator" training for a multi-national company. The company had been selected and authorized by Customs and Border Protection to perform C-TPAT validations in China.