After nearly 20 years in government, international consulting, and politics, Ms. Sharon Sydow was named Vice President with Allen F. Johnson & Associates, LLC in January 2006.  Ms. Sydow’s position with the firm draws upon her diverse work and academic experiences to cover a wide range of areas, including facilitating government relations, developing global business and marketing strategies, providing management services, and helping clients to identify market opportunities and navigate import requirements for agricultural and industrial products and services.

Before joining Allen F. Johnson and Associates, Ms. Sydow was the Director for Agricultural Trade Policy in the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR).  During her five years in this position, Ms. Sydow worked closely with other U.S. government agencies, the Hill, and the private sector to develop and coordinate U.S. negotiating positions and strategies for multilateral and bilateral negotiations with a wide range of countries on all agricultural and food products, including: market access, domestic support, export competition, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, customs procedures, import licensing and tariff-rate quota (TRQ) administration, subsidies rules, and trade remedies (including Section 301).  Ms. Sydow was the lead staff-level agricultural negotiator for the WTO accessions of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Vietnam, and over 30 other countries in Africa, Asia, and the former Soviet Union; as well as the lead agricultural negotiator for the U.S.-Southern African Customs Union (SACU) FTA.  She also worked on a wide variety of agricultural trade issues, including negotiations with the EU on market access for U.S. rice as well as compensation for EU enlargement; negotiations with Russia on market access for U.S. poultry, pork, and beef; and negotiations with Mexico on sweetener market access under NAFTA.  Ms. Sydow was responsible for the annual sugar TRQ allocation and general trade policy issues for cotton and sugar, including WTO dispute settlement cases.  She also directed USTR’s work on farm policy and the Farm Bill.

Ms. Sydow’s strong background in agricultural trade and markets comes from ten years at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which she joined in 1991 as a Presidential Management Intern.  She started her career at USDA’s Economic Research Service, where she analyzed grain, oilseed, meat, poultry, and horticultural markets and policies in the (now former) Soviet Union.  While at ERS, she traveled throughout the former Soviet Union, provided extensive technical assistance on agricultural information and marketing analysis, and served as an agricultural consultant to the World Bank and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).  In 1997, Ms. Sydow moved to the Foreign Agricultural Service where she led work on domestic support in the WTO, including U.S. negotiating proposals and notifications, and WTO accessions.  Ms. Sydow advised the Secretary of Agriculture and USDA leadership on WTO agricultural negotiations, with a focus on domestic support and U.S. farm policy.  She led the development of the 2000 U.S. negotiating proposal on domestic support and contributed to negotiating proposals and strategies in other areas, such as market access and export competition.

Ms. Sydow received a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University.  Her undergraduate degree in political science and history is from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where she also studied marketing and business.  Ms. Sydow was born in Raleigh, North Carolina and she and her husband (who is from Peoria, Illinois) have a young daughter.