Before transitioning into law, Gavin gained deep experience as an in-house international trade compliance professional, helping companies to understand and manage the relationship between trade regulations and business practices by building new compliance programs at two global manufacturing companies, working across departments and entities—domestically and internationally—to ensure company-wide alignment.
The “systems thinking” required to accomplish that alignment is what Gavin has always liked most about his work. Gavin’s work has touched nearly all areas of both import and export compliance. Notably, during his time in trade compliance, he led corporate responses to investigations and inquiries by US, Mexican, and Canadian customs authorities; designed a comprehensive value chain mapping and forced labor due diligence program; conducted internal audits on valuation of merchandise; implemented and used ERP systems for free trade agreement qualification, tariff classification, and multi-tiered partner screening; and developed inventory management methods to identify countries of origin for commingled fungible goods. These feats are notable not only for their scale and complexity, but also because they require numerous siloed actors to join forces and pull in the same direction.
Gavin began his formal training in the field of international trade in 2013. Over the years, he has earned a JD from Case Western Reserve University School of Law; an MA in International Trade, Investment, and Development Policy and an MBA from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies; a BA in Anthropology from Macalester College; and a US customs broker license. Throughout his education, he has focused on developing a balance of strong qualitative and quantitative skills, including interviewing, surveying, network analysis, and statistical analysis. This approach has given him a holistic understanding of law and international trade, incorporating a variety of academic, political, and social perspectives.
In a previous life, Gavin worked as an interpreter, providing live Spanish-English and English-Spanish interpretation for groups of five to 100 people, and as a translator of government documents and interview transcripts from Chinese into English. Gavin speaks Spanish, Mandarin, Norwegian, and Uyghur (in descending order of fluency), and has lived in China, Ecuador, Norway, Spain, and Turkey.
Gavin was involved in Case Western Reserve University’s chapter of the Law and Political Economy Society throughout law school, acting as President for several semesters. He also co-founded Cleveland Heights’ Forest City Community Land Trust, a non-profit organization that acquires and holds land for community-defined purposes such as affordable housing and use as commons, with several of his neighbors.
Outside of his professional life, Gavin enjoys gardening and has gradually transformed his front and back lawns into habitats filled with native wildflowers and perennial edibles.
