Mr. Mitchell is the U.S. government official responsible for enhancing the competitiveness of the U.S. private equity and venture capital sector domestically and internationally. His work under the Obama Administration is primarily directed at linking U.S. based General Partners (GP’s) with foreign-based Limited Partners (LP’s) such as sovereign wealth funds, pensions, superannuation funds, insurance companies, banks and high net worth family offices. Mr. Mitchell is an alumnus of the Venture Capital Institute and has represented the International Trade Administration on the Board of Advisors to the Latin American Venture Capital Association and the Quebec City Conference. Mr. Mitchell has served as co-organizer and co-chair on bilateral venture capital working groups with the governments of Australia, Brazil, and the European Union. He was the 2010 Chairman of the OECD Working Party for Entrepreneurship, the world’s largest body of government officials working on entrepreneurship and small business.
Randy Mitchell joined the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce in 2001, from the private sector where he had a history of entrepreneurial development in Russia, Japan and the United States. From 1997-2001 he was founder of a start-up e-commerce company exporting U.S. consumer goods to the Japanese. In that position he built a management team that included former Fortune 500 executives including the former Chairman, CEO and President of Avon Japan. Along with his team he raised $3.5 million in angel and venture capital financing and built strategic partnerships with some of the largest companies in Japan and the United States. Mr. Mitchell resided in Russia from 1992 through 1996, where he built distribution networks in Moscow and St. Petersburg for U.S. and Scandinavian food and beverage brands such as Nestle (Findus), Sara Lee, Anheuser-Busch, Tyson, Subway, Campbell Soup and others. This included working with Russian entrepreneurs in distribution, retail, and food service.
Mr. Mitchell conceived of and convened more than 50 bilateral or multilateral entrepreneurship and investment symposia in: Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Latvia, Norway, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United States.
The mission of the Manufacturing and Services (MAS) unit of the International Trade Administration is to advance the international competitiveness of U.S. industry by leveraging in-depth sector and analytical expertise in the development and execution of trade policy and trade promotion strategies.
Specific to Private Equity and Venture Capital, the office focuses on increasing U.S. GP exports to foreign-based LP’s. This is often done by way of Certified Trade Missions of U.S. GPs to foreign destinations to meet LPs.