Ann Bacher is a Foreign Commercial Service officer with over twenty years of service to US exporters. She is currently the Senior Commercial Officer in Bangkok, Thailand, where she works with US companies interested in doing business in Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos.
From 2002 through mid-2005, she was the Regional Director for Asia Pacific in the HQ offices of the Commercial Service, US Dept of Commerce in Washington. As such, she was responsible for all the US Department of Commerce operations from Seoul to Sydney. This includes the largest Commercial Service post – China with 20 officers and 80 local staff. Prior to her arrival in Washington in 2001, she served as Commercial Counselor of the US Embassy in Tel Aviv with US Government supported business development and export promotion responsibilities in Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
In 1997, she became the Director of the US Trade Center in Mexico City, at the time, the only US Government exhibition facility in the US’s second largest export market. With a staff of 25 and revenues of over 1 million dollars annually, she brought thousands of new to market US companies to Mexico. She also served as Senior Commercial Officer in Peru and Deputy Senior Commercial officer in Santiago, Chile. She has worked as an international economist and a trade specialist for the US Department of Commerce in Washington, New York City and Hartford, CT.
Prior to joining the Commerce Department, she worked for an international bank after receiving her MBA from Baylor University in Texas. She is married to James Sampson, an architectural designer and they have a son.
