Connect and Grow: Director General Update

As director general of the Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade since January 2020, Marco Forgione MCIEx has become a leading authority and commentator on global trade, empowering businesses to grow internationally through educational programmes and digital trade solutions.

He is a key intermediator between governments and businesses domestically and overseas, sitting on the Critical Imports Council in the UK and on the multilateral B20 Taskforce for Trade and Investment. He is a visiting professor at Aston University and regularly comments on trade and supply chain matters in the international media, including the BBC, Sky News, CNN, Al Jazeera and Bloomberg, among others.

Under his leadership, the Chartered Institute has grown from a team of 12 to now over 170 trade and customs experts, seeing membership grow from 2,000 to 7,000, culminating in the organisation being awarded a Royal Charter in 2024. The charity has become a trusted partner to the UK government in the delivery of trade facilitation solutions such as the Trader Support Service (TSS). This digital portal has enabled the continuation of goods movements between Great Britain and Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework.

Forgione is also a passionate advocate for trade as a force for good in the world, regularly commenting in the media that it is a driver of economic prosperity and that it can serve to bring communities closer together. He has led the Chartered Institute into partnerships with the World Trade Organization and International Trade Centre that have built trade capacity among MSMEs and female entrepreneurs. He also entered the organisation into the TLIP Institute – a global collaboration to develop a new digital infrastructure for trade – alongside the World Economic Forum, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, the IOTA Foundation, TradeMark Africa and the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation.

Before the Chartered Institute, Forgione led trade bodies in the arts, antiques and creative sectors, navigating the British Antiques Dealers’ Association through digital transformation between 2015 and 2020, and leading creative bodies EVCOM and the International Visual Communication Association between 2008 and 2015. He also previously had director level roles at Canterbury College and the Landscape Institute.