Class VIII (2010-2011)
2. Bryn Cain
Sponsor Club: Bricktown in Oklahoma City, District 5750
Host Club: West Brisbane Daybreak, District 9630
Bryn Cain is originally from Oklahoma City in the central United States. When she was 15, she moved to Brisbane, Australia to be a Rotary Youth Exchange Student in District 9630. She returned to Oklahoma to finish high school and has been moving ever since. She went to Richmond University in London for her undergraduate degree in International Relations (IR) and Economics. During the summers, she did various activities related to IR including working at the World Trade Center in Albany, NY; studying Chinese in Tianjin, China and working fulltime at the Foreign Press Association in London planning high level press conferences.
To further expand her knowledge of international trade and development, she joined the United States Peace Corps. With the Peace Corp she spent two years in Senegal, West Africa as a small business development consultant. Her work included teaching business classes, working one-on-one with entrepreneurs, conducting leadership trainings with high school aged girls, assisting UNHCR with the repatriation of refugees to Mauritania, leading USAID English summer camps and distributing treated mosquito nets in multiple villages to prevent the spread of malaria. After Senegal, she moved to Austin, TX to work (and swing dance) for a year before returning to Brisbane as a Rotary World Peace Fellow.
She recently returned from Hong Kong where she spent three months interning with the US Commercial Service division of the US Consulate for her Applied Field Experience. Her work focused on helping US companies invest and enter the Hong Kong and Chinese markets and the myriad challenges involved. Specifically, she did business matching, planned the contingent of US companies to the Asian Aerospace Expo trade show and wrote market research reports on investing in Taobao, the Hong Kong film industry and electric vehicle usage. She also participated in numerous roundtables about protecting the intellectual property of US businesses in Hong Kong and China. As a result of these discussions, she chose to write her thesis on China’s state capacity to protect intellectual property. After receiving her master’s from UQ, Bryn will be returning to Austin, TX at the end of the year and hopes to continue working in economic development and international trade.