Janice Gilbert-Early - Director Global Trade Compliance & Regulatory Affairs
Janice Gilbert-Early is the Director of Trade Compliance and Regulatory Affairs at an importer/distributor/manufacturer of food serviceware. Her role includes trade compliance, quality assurance and product stewardship.
She first gained her trade knowledge while working for an import broker and then made the switch to using that knowledge to work for an importer. She discusses what she learned while working for the broker and how the rolls are different.
Other discussion topics:
how her industry is regulated by FDA and the struggles of ensuring compliance with FDA regulations.
how to ask for additional responsibility and gradually expand your skill set
what to ask in an interview to gauge the company culture and if it would be a good fit
how to get TC to be more involved in business decisions
how section 301 duties have impacted her work and company.
Contact us:
Email: womenintradepodcast@gmail.com
Twitter: @Tradepodcast
Full episode transcript:
Introduction (00:01):
Welcome to Women In Trade, a podcast for up and coming professionals like you in the field of international trade. Kellie Kemock is your guide on this journey, an accomplished lawyer and trade compliance consultant who's passionate about helping young women navigate this complex field, equipping you with the tools and resources you'll need to pursue an exciting and meaningful career. You'll hear candid interviews with other successful female leaders and benefit from their experience. It's time to build the career of your dreams. Here's your host, Kellie Kemock.
Kellie Kemock (00:40):
Today we're talking with Janice early. She is a director at an importer. We can just start with what is your current role and how did you get to where you are today?
Janice Gilbert-Early (00:53):
Well, right now I work, as you said, for an importer and distributor. We're actually most recently have begun manufacturing operations so that is kind of how my role has changed. Right now it is kind of spanning between trade compliance and actually quality assurance and product stewardship.
Kellie Kemock (01:16):
What is your career path? How did you get to the director position where you are today?
Janice Gilbert-Early (01:23):
My career path was accidental <laugh>,
Kellie Kemock (01:27):
A recurring theme, honestly,
Janice Gilbert-Early (01:28):
Which I'm sure you've heard a lot that nobody does this on purpose, so very few people. So I began in the industry in customs brokerage and working for third party brokerage freight forwarding organizations mostly throughout my career. And then approximately seven years ago I decided to take a position with a importer, cuz that was really the only aspect that I have an attempted yet.
Kellie Kemock (02:01):
Was it hard to make the switch from the brokerage side to the import side, or were you able to apply a lot of the knowledge that you learned?
Janice Gilbert-Early (02:09):
Oh no. A lot of the knowledge that I've learned, the only difference being it is more product centric rather than service or process. There's more of an emphasis based on how can trade compliance support the more profit center areas of the business rather than offering just an outside service to an importer. It's more of an integration of trade compliance with procurement and sales. And even at times legal, my career experience prepared me very well because my current role has a lot of interaction with all of the government agencies that I worked with prior being a customs broker, epa, fda, U S D A. So it gave me a very strong base for actually working with an importer.
Kellie Kemock (03:06):
When you made the switch to working for an importer versus a broker, do you feel like you're involved more in actual business decisions rather than just following a process and providing a service?
Janice Gilbert-Early (03:18):
Yeah, most definitely. But not all companies are formed that way in the past. I know that trade compliance is kind of relegated to the back of the room historically, so this is more of integrating that more into the day to day operations. And I know we spoke about this before about being able to speak a language. There's a difference between telling somebody no, you can't do that. The conversation and the narrative moves more towards, can you look at this option? Okay, let's try to do it this way, or this is the reasons why we can't as to be not limiting and being an immediate hard stop but evolving the conversation to things like tariff engineering, saying like, Okay, do we have any options to change the mix of components? Would that satisfy the customer and also bring down the duty rate to an acceptable price point. Those types of conversations take place
Kellie Kemock (04:26):
That you didn't have when you were working with the broker?
Janice Gilbert-Early (04:30):
Yeah, no. When we were working with the broker, basically the customer gave us the marching instructions, gave us all the information and we would apply it. Most of the conversations on that end sent it around feedback, getting from a government agency, a partner government agency such as FDA and what they came back with, and then helping the customer get us the information we need to satisfy the requirements of that government agency or working with them on say a CF 28 or 29 in order to get that response to customs.
Kellie Kemock (05:10):
Do you feel like your job involved educating the client about why they needed to provide you or how they needed to provide you the information?
Janice Gilbert-Early (05:19):
Very much so because they are some customers who were working in imports that didn't have a basis for it. It was just basically trial and error and they didn't realize all of the regulations and what needed to happen to do it effectively due it compliantly. So there was a lot of education on that end with some customers, Other customers, it was more limited to certain areas of compliance rather than generally speaking.
Kellie Kemock (05:51):
Was it formal training or it was just kind of informal training? You saw something that was a red flag on their piece of information, like you have this classified in this chapter and that is, We don't think that's right. And so that you kind of have to explain to them.
Janice Gilbert-Early (06:04):
Well, it was more of an informal way. Most of the conversations to be had. I know years ago, because I've been in here for a long time, <laugh> in the industry. I was actually working in the industry before informed compliance. So back then it was basically on the job training and it was almost set up like a guild where you came in as a junior entry writer. They called them at that time. Okay. And then you moved up to senior and it was very much on the job training. There wasn't any formal program like there is today where you can take certification classes and learn how to classify and learn about valuation and all of the other aspects of compliance.
Kellie Kemock (07:02):
You said when you were working for the broker, you managed relationships with government agencies. So were you networking with your contacts at those agencies and those kinds of contacts you were able to take into your position at an importer?
Janice Gilbert-Early (07:17):
No, not really because I kind of moved around a lot. I wasn't in a single port of entry, so throughout my career I moved around quite a bit. So I didn't have those named contacts at the agencies. I kind of developed it as I went along and I really didn't have any difficulty. And having those conversations though that a couple of ports, there are some tough customers there in both customs and fda, what makes it a little more challenging, but I didn't find it too difficult to deal with.
Kellie Kemock (07:54):
If you were going to look at a new hire, what kind of certifications would you find useful in someone who who's kind of building their career without a lot of experience?
Janice Gilbert-Early (08:06):
Usually in various areas of the country, they have a world trade organization that offer certification programs. Various cities have those organizations where they offer those types of programs. That is very important on the importer side because what I've found, I'm not saying that this is across the board, but what I have particularly found is that because the burden is really completely on the importer, they don't do a lot of training in house with a lot of customs brokerage organizations, particularly in the classification area because the importers have to provide that information. They're not building those skill sets like they used to. So that is very difficult to find and the learning curve is lengthy in trying to start off from the GRAS and all of the elements that go into actually classifying something properly. Are you gonna look at the components? Are you gonna look at the intended use? It becomes an art form at that point on the importer side to find out exactly, okay, what is the most correct most effective way to be able to do this? And that skill set in working as a service provider in third party logistics is not readily available.
Kellie Kemock (09:39):
If we can talk about your current role as a director what industry is your company in?
Janice Gilbert-Early (09:46):
We're in the food and beverage industry and it is food service wear.
Kellie Kemock (09:52):
Are you regulated by FDA regulation?
Janice Gilbert-Early (09:55):
Yes. And in some cases epa.
Kellie Kemock (09:58):
Oh, okay. If you could tell us a little bit about your responsibilities as a director and maybe then explain kind of maybe your team and maybe what lower level people might do in a company such as yours.
Janice Gilbert-Early (10:11):
Right now I basically started off in trade compliance, but I'm spanning a lot of different areas right now with quality assurance on both the process and the product end of things. And also assisting our manufacturing organization in our industry. The connectivity with a government agency centers around what goes into the product rather than the product itself. A lot of times having to do with epa, what chemical components go into the product that we have to have clearance with FDA and EPA as well, or proper import importing the product and manufacture of the product. FDA is mostly whom we work with. We've had to develop a foreign supplier verification program with FDA for one of our items. And I would say that 95% of our imported product have to be cleared through fda.
Kellie Kemock (11:16):
So you said your responsibilities include trade compliance, quality assurance, and product stewardship. Trade compliance would be making sure that you're meeting FDA requirements on the import transaction. Can you tell us a little bit more about quality assurance and product stewardship?
Janice Gilbert-Early (11:34):
Product stewardship co comes mostly in those products that are a part of green sustainable products where they are compostable, they're recyclable, they don't place a heavy burden on the environment. That's where most of the product stewardship comes in. And basically that is making sure of that. It's going through all the product testing and the analysis and approving those products that they meet all regulatory requirements for both sustainability A and for import and public health and safety. As far as the team of people who I work with it, it's very varied. It runs the gamut between, yes, learning how to classify working with the customs brokers, working with fda, if there is a sampling for exam, if there's an intensive exam for a container pulled by customs. Then we have other people who work mostly on the analysis end and continuous improvement. We will have vendor and broker scorecards. So we take a look at broker compliance. They work on the product and the duty spend and the level of tariffs, how those trend lines go. So a lot of it has to do with performance analysis and also product regulatory databases. A lot of metrics and analysis work also goes into it.
Kellie Kemock (13:13):
Are they organized by responsibility or does your team, everyone on your team do classification, broker compliance and performance analysis?
Janice Gilbert-Early (13:24):
No, it depends on the person's skill set and what they gravitate to. Everybody has different experiences and some outfits them better in one area than the other area. Basically we do what is called a sw. It's an exercise in what are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. So we go through that and we see what a person's skill set is, what their experience is, what they really like to do, even those things that challenge them, what they like to do, what they don't like to do to really build a team that capitalizes on everybody's strengths and diminishes the team's weaknesses. So it's almost what we like to do is almost look at it symbiotically like an ecosystem where everything merges together for what needs to be done and what the direction
Kellie Kemock (14:22):
Is. I've had a mentee reach out to me asking about how she could expand her experiences at her current role because she felt like she wasn't, was only on one particular topic. I had a hard time answering her, All I can advise you to do is ask for more responsibility or say, Can I learn a different aspect of trade compliance? Can you send me to some training on this? And so I can take on that responsibility. And she didn't think that her managers would be open to that. And I said, Well that's disappointing because in trade compliance it's always been in my perspective and on the job kind of training. And in order to do that you have to ask and say, Okay, I wanna learn more. I wanna learn more. So I love the way that you have this outlook with your team of what do you know want to know and how do we divvy up the responsibilities. Long story short, what advice do you have for someone who's in a role where they want to expand? How can they approach expanding their knowledge base?
Janice Gilbert-Early (15:25):
It's a little difficult to answer that question as you had because there are a lot of environmental elements that you have to know and able to guide somebody. You have to know what the culture is, what they're experiencing now you have to paint a little bit, they have to paint a little bit of a landscape for you in how the corporation is set up and why does she think that she is only being relegated to a single area or a single task. So that is very hard to mean the manager could be unapproachable. So that makes it difficult. One of the things she can do is she can ask other people if they need any help so that she can find out more about the entire throughput and going back to that manager and dimensionalizing her conversation by finding out different pieces of the operation, assisting others potentially getting support before she goes and asks that question. So it's more of a dimensional picture that she's presenting the manager with rather than just saying, Why am I getting shut down?
Kellie Kemock (16:47):
That's all she can do is just kind of build her case and approach and approach the manager. I agree with that. You mentioned about corporate culture, maybe the culture doesn't allow for it and you obviously create a culture that is inclusive like that. How can one find out what a corporate culture is before they accept a position at a company so that they don't find themselves in this kind of
Janice Gilbert-Early (17:12):
Spot? Yes, that is a difficult one. <laugh>. A lot of times it comes down to the question that the person being interviewed asks whether it's a single individual or it's a panel. One of the questions that I like to ask and a perspective employee is what are some of your must haves when you're looking at a company that would make it the best fit for you? So you get to hear from them about what it is they're looking for in a company and then you can speak to that a bit and really find out if that employee is a good fit for the operation. Some of the questions that they can ask is, what is your leadership style that can give you a good indication of what you're having to deal with,
Kellie Kemock (18:09):
Right? Because if they have a thoughtful answer of how they are approaching being a leader, then at least that they are putting some effort towards being a good leader in theory. But if the answer is like, I don't know, I just show up, then obviously run away screaming, right? <laugh>?
Janice Gilbert-Early (18:27):
Yeah, I mean from my perspective, I mean our executive team and CEO really champion that sort of culture to begin with, which makes it very easy. It doesn't help if the person at the top it is not looking for that culture and it's more of a cutthroat culture. It's very hard to make those changes from the bottom up. But as long as you have the executive leadership wanting a very inclusive culture it makes it a lot easier to be able to build that throughout the organization.
Kellie Kemock (19:04):
We talked about how you have to speak the language of the different aspects of your company. So how do you build a culture where you're in on the decisions at the beginning instead of finding out later that there's a problem
Janice Gilbert-Early (19:18):
That Yeah, that's harder in a larger company because it still seems to be very much in silo mentality where you have very part structure around business units and there's not a lot of flow between other groups like sales and procurement is on one side, then you have logistics and supply chain on the other side, then you have trade compliance. So it really helps if the environment is more because then they're not gonna come to you until there is a problem. There is a inspector or another government person knocking on their door and then people are running around with their hair on fire saying, Help me. What we've tried to do is actually having more closer relationship with safe procurement and sales. They're looking for a particular price point. So they're gonna try to find out, okay, how much does this cost to bring it in to add that into the cost component of the good?
(20:23):
They're gonna look to see if there's ways, if there's any type of program out there, whether you're talking about G S P or the miscellaneous tire fill or in this environment currently, any exclusions that would assist their efforts in driving sales, gaining market share, or even taking a look at making the good out of alternate components that's not going to raise the cost and perhaps may lower the cost and pitch that to the customer and see if that's a doable alternative. So those are all types of conversations that happen. It just depends on the organization really. But I think it has to do with how you can rethink the normal conversation and trade compliance so that it's more supportive of these operations rather than being just an outside inspector and a cop saying, No, you can't do that, but not having a potential solution and alternative that's very important in getting those groups to work more together with trade compliance within an organization.
Kellie Kemock (21:43):
Can I ask how the section 3 0 1 duties and Chinese goods are affecting you?
Janice Gilbert-Early (21:49):
It has tripled my workload. Yes, it is a very difficult situation. It has an enormous impact. You can just look at the news and see how widespread that is. So there's a lot of things happening. You can't switch up your supply chain in a heartbeat. These are relationships, business relationships that have been developed over years. Now China has the largest manufacturing capability, bar none. And if you have a product that also requires a high level of health compliant then that makes it that much more difficult to change your supply chain, whether you're talking about working with your suppliers on pricing to hopefully get pricing lowered. That's one aspect. Another aspect is people have been talking about bonded warehousing in this type of a situation where you're not paying duty up front. I have heard importers talk about bonds, surety bonds and bonds stacking issues because the surety companies and customs are coming back to 'em saying bond isn't sufficient and you're raising it and then four months later they're coming back cuz they use a 12 month rolling average. They're coming back again and saying, you need to raise your bond again. And sometimes they're asking for collateral depending on the situation. So that's an added component of tying up cash flow in order to satisfy the bond requirements that have skyrocketed with these tariffs and how broad based they are.
Kellie Kemock (23:35):
A bond value has to cover X amount of the value of the good or the value of the duties owed. So when the duty is increased to this 25, 30% that we're talking about that's why the bond has to be increased, right?
Janice Gilbert-Early (23:51):
Yes. It's covering both the duty and the tariffs.
Kellie Kemock (23:54):
And bond stacking is just a way to purchase a secondary bond in order to have a total value that covers,
Janice Gilbert-Early (24:00):
Yeah, it, it's hard because a new bond has to be written and the old bond has to be canceled. But the first bond, you have to keep that in place until it liquidates. You're having another bond with a new start date that you have to have that money in a ban until all those covered under that bond liquidate. So it becomes problematic when they're asking for additional collateral. If your bond is going above 1 million, you have to hold that out and say like a letter of credit or something. You can't use those funds for your business. So all of that money is being tied up just for a custom bond. And then you have the other things on tariff engineering.
Kellie Kemock (24:51):
And so tariff engineering is interesting because you are in a gray area, right? Because the idea is that you're going to make changes to the product in order to change the classification of the product in order to hopefully avoid duties from section 3 0 1 or just lowering the classification rate in general. So in what way can you change your classification while still being inside the legal bounds of classification rules?
Janice Gilbert-Early (25:21):
And in one aspect, you can look at a product and say, these are the components of these products. But then on the other hand, you could look at its intended use. There was a case of Ford versus the Department of Treasury when they were bringing in, I think, what was it, Cargo vans, I believe it is. Oh
Kellie Kemock (25:46):
Yeah, with the seat, right?
Janice Gilbert-Early (25:48):
Yes. The one we're talking about. So that what is its intended use at time of import versus how it was imported.
Kellie Kemock (25:59):
They imported it with the seat in it as a passenger vehicle, and then when it crossed the border, they took the seat out and started using it as a cargo. So what was the decision?
Janice Gilbert-Early (26:10):
It's still out there. Oh, <laugh> still out there. And it has the potential to be able to change how we look at or how customs is looking at how something is classified. Because if they look at intended use, okay, that's gonna change the ball game a little bit. That's gonna be a game changer because on the one hand, you could look at a product and say, Okay, it's made of these components. It it's say it's a non-woven, very vague HTS code. It can cover a lot of items and then you can look at the goods intended use and sometimes the goods intended use is at a lower rate of duty than if you're looking at exactly what it's made out of. There are some things where you're actually getting more correct by using intended use versus using what it's made out of and what that HCS code is.
(27:09):
And if it's one that's very vague and covers a whole host of items, then that's also a part of tariff engineering as well. It's really digging into <affirmative> and really drilling down and analyzing a product to come up with the most correct designation. And with tariff engineering, there's a cautionary note there. You have to go to multiple sources to find out whether you're thinking on that is compliant. So it's not something that, Oh, I think we can do this. Okay, let's do it. What you would like to do needs to be corroborated by legal type sources.
Kellie Kemock (27:52):
Yeah, I mean you need to do your due diligence and your research, and if you're not requesting a binding ruling, you better have a really good researched argument on paper that you can hand to customs if they start asking. So you were using tariff and duties. I tend to use them, but you were saying, you know, kind of made a distinction between the two. So what is the distinction between tariff and duty?
Janice Gilbert-Early (28:16):
Duty is the adva alarm duty rate that covers the importation of that product no matter what country it's exported from. The tariffs are specific to pieces of legislation and the countries that are named in that legislation. You can have section 2 32 on the steel and aluminum that covers a whole host of countries, whereas the section 3 0 1 just covers goods being imported from China.
Kellie Kemock (28:47):
One other thing I wanted to go back to was when you were talking about the three, the implementation of the 3 0 1 duties and how changing the supply chain isn't really feasible especially when you are dealing with products regulated by the fda <affirmative>. And I wanted to ask you, is that because the FDA has restrictions on who you purchase goods from, do they need to know your bill of material? If anything changes in that? Do you have to advise them and get approval?
Janice Gilbert-Early (29:21):
No, it's not that aspect. I'll mention medical devices.
Kellie Kemock (29:26):
That's my background. That's the only reason why I thought of that. But I know it's much different in your arena here.
Janice Gilbert-Early (29:32):
Yeah, because in medical devices it takes a while to be able to have a manufacturing operation get to a certain level of quality that will satisfy fda. I'll use medical disposable gloves. They are a medical device and if they don't have the proper integrity, if they don't have the proper barrier, it can cause an impact to public health with the spreading of contaminants, diseases, illnesses. So to get a factory up and running to a certain level, getting that factories filing with FDA as a foreign establishment, all of the testing required to get that approved, whether you're talking about pre-market notifications, things of that nature, it takes a long time to be able to do that because FDA can put you on notice. They can put alert out there with that manufacturer saying that there are issues with their product. And then you have to go through a series of getting sampling of multiple shipments before you're taking off that list.
Kellie Kemock (30:52):
And the FDA can just send you a letter that says, We're not accepting any of your goods anymore. Is it that? And that's how quickly they can do that. Right?
Janice Gilbert-Early (31:00):
And that you have to either export them or destroy them.
Kellie Kemock (31:04):
It's less of a change to the product itself. And the FDA is more concerned about the change of the location and the manufacturing facility and whether they're approved.
Janice Gilbert-Early (31:15):
Yes, the manufacturing process and the materials used are very key to having a top quality product meet those rigorous levels of integrity, product integrity,
Kellie Kemock (31:32):
<laugh>, I so appreciate it and I appreciate your advice and I love learning from you. And so all of the topics that we talked about, super interesting and helpful and hopefully helpful to people building their careers so they can be like, Oh, I never heard that term. I'll go look it up. And just knowing the terminology in our industry is half the battle to performing in an interview. You need to be able to express that you have the knowledge base. Very helpful, and I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. I'll let you get going and have the rest of your day, your busy day.
Janice Gilbert-Early (32:02):
All right. Thank you so much, Kelly.
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