CREATE Welcomes Customs and Border Protection Visitors

Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Cynthia F. Whittenburg, the Executive Director, Trade Facilitation and Administration in the Office of International Trade visited CREATE on Friday May 29th to review progress on the “Sharpening Expertise Initiative: Trade Workforce 2020" project.  She was accompanied by Tara Lemus, CBP’s Program Manager in the Resource Management Division of the Office of International Trade, who is overseeing this project. 

The project, being conducted by CREATE in collaboration with the USC Center for Global Supply Chain Management (CGSCM), is charged with assisting CBP in planning for preparing its workforce to meet future needs driven by global trends and game-changers projected to disrupt current supply chain processes.  The project team, led by 3 faculty researchers and supported by 6 Research Assistants prepared an extensive presentation identifying the key political, economic, social and technological (PEST) factors of the next 5-10 years, and their potential impact on CBP education and training needs. 
The team is developing a methodology to help CBP be more predictive (rather than reactive) in resource forecasts and effectiveness, with the goal of leading the US into world leadership in trade facilitation, without sacrificing CBPs trade enforcement and security functions.  The next step in the project is to convene a roundtable of industry executives to obtain feedback and refined guidance on the impact of these factors on different industries, supply-chain processes and CBP operations.  Ms. Whittenburg and Ms. Lemus were very pleased with the presentation and discussion, and will explore coupling the roundtable with a CBP meeting being planned for late July in Chicago, where many of the desired roundtable participants are expected to attend.