Vancouver

Monica Gruder Drake, MGDrake Consulting

Monica Gruder Drake is a communications professional who grew up and studied in Europe and the United States and whose working
life has been spent in the United States, Canada and China. She established MGDrake Consulting in Ottawa in 1985 and subsequently in Vancouver, where she now lives, as a niche firm specializing in helping to generate a greater understanding of the multilateral development banks such as the World Bank for Canadians in academia, business, government and the media.

Educated in Europe and the United States, the multilingual Drake, who is a native speaker of French and English and is fluent in German, Italian, and Spanish, received an MA in International Relations in 1971from the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. After working as a journalist in Washington DC, covering international trade issues, she joined the World Bank in 1977. There, she worked in -- and eventually headed – a key policy communications unit responsible for relations between member governments and the World Bank’s senior management.

Following her move to Canada in 1984, after an initial spell in Ottawa, Drake was with the Canadian Embassy in Beijing from 1987 to 1990. She subsequently served as the Executive Director of the Canadian member committee of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC), and from 1995 through 1997, she shared her insights on Asia-Pacific Affairs on a weekly basis with viewers of the French-language all-news channel of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

MGDrake Consulting has been retained by clients such as Canada’s federal Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the provincial government of British Columbia, and the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, as well as by private sector clients whom the firm has helped to collaborate directly with the multilateral banks. . Drake undertook an assignment for the World Bank’s European Office in 1984-85 and was subsequently retained by the Bank’s External Affairs Vice-Presidency in Washington DC in 1997 as Special Communications Advisor for Canada, an assignment that she still retains.

999 Canada Place, Suite 404,
Vancouver, British Columbia,
Canada V6C 3E2
Telephone: +1-604-926-9282,
Fax: +1-604-926-4299

mgdrake@axion.net