E. Ashley Wills- February 11, 2005
"India, Outsourcing and Other Trade Issues"
E. Ashley Wills is the first Assistant U.S. Trade Representative to serve in the Office of South Asian Affairs, a new office that USTR created in June 2002 to oversee trade policy in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Mr. Wills came to the post after serving as U.S. ambassador to Sri Lanka.
Mr. Wills previously was deputy chief of mission and charge d'affaires at the U.S. Mission in New Delhi, India from 1997 to 2000, and before that he was minister counselor for public affairs. Wills has been a Foreign Service Officer since 1972, serving in India, Brussels, Belgium, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Grenada, Barbados, South Africa and Romania.
In Washington, D.C., Mr. Wills served in the State Department as head of South African Affairs, and he attended the State Department's Senior Seminar in 1991 and 1992. Born in Tennessee and raised in Mississippi and Georgia, Mr. Wills has a master's degree in economics from Johns Hopkins University and he graduated with honors from the University of Virginia in 1971.