Speaker Bios: 

Tanya Hill began serving in October 2017 as the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) International Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property Attorney Advisor (ICHIP) for Africa. She is a career prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York (“EDNY”). Before deployment to Abuja, she was Deputy Chief in the Asset Forfeiture Unit in the EDNY. During her career, she has handled several IP cases, including prosecutions resulting in criminal convictions, and civil in rem actions resulting in the forfeiture of millions of dollars. As ICHIP, Tanya has focused on countering pharmaceutical and other IP crime and to that end has led several large, regional workshops. One of those workshops featured an original Nigerian-produced documentary, “Fishbone,” about the hazards of counterfeit pharmaceuticals in Nigeria. Fishbone now has been translated to French for distribution throughout Francophone Africa.

Special Agent Chris Hessenflow is a Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Assistant Attaché assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa. With over 15 years of law enforcement experience, he currently manages a portfolio of HSI criminal investigations spanning 17 countries throughout sub-Saharan Africa. These investigations target transnational criminal organizations involved in human trafficking, international money laundering, wildlife trafficking, theft of intellectual property, child exploitation, counterproliferation of export controlled items, and a myriad of other programmatic areas under the broad investigative purview of HSI. A native of Kansas City, Chris is a graduate of both the University of Missouri and Sam Houston State University.