Maria Gabriela Sarmiento
Profile
Maria Gabriela Sarmiento is an Attorney-at-Law and founding partner of a legal consulting firm in Caracas, Venezuela (2005) with a branch in Zurich, Switzerland, where she is based since 2010. Between 2005 and 2010, she lived and worked in Caracas, Venezuela, where, besides her duties at the Law firm, she was designated secretary and later vice-president of the Association franco-vénézuélienne de juristes and teaching professor of a Seminar on Commercial Arbitration at the Law Faculty of the José Maria Vargas University.
Before 2005, she worked as e-Commerce for Developing Countries Project Manager at the International Telecommunication Union (2000-03) as well as Junior Consultant on public procurement and e-procurement at the International Trade Centre UNCTAD/WTO, both located in Geneva, Switzerland (1998-99). She served also as trainee at the office of the Relations with the EU Parliament of the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium (2000), and at the United Nations Commission for International Trade Law in Vienna, Austria (2003).
She completed a postgraduate course on International Trade Law organized by the International Training Centre of the International Labor Office and the Istituto di studi europei in Turin, Italy (2003). She holds a LL.M on International Trade Law from the University of Bourgogne, France (1998), and a Law-Degree from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV 1996). Her main research areas are legal aspects on electronic commerce, international trade law with a special focus on arbitration, Latin America's regional integration groups, and WTO. She has published in English and Spanish in peer-reviewed legal journals.