Setareh Bateni

Background

About Setareh Bateni

I am currently completing my second Master’s at the University of British Columbia in Public Policy & Global Affairs and recipient of the MPPGA entrance scholarship. I am passionate about trade policy and its impact on geopolitical tensions and climate change exacerbation over the decades. My interests are centred around strategic sustainable trade policies that can quell current tensions and align nations towards poverty reduction, while fighting climate change. My current course focus includes: Global Order: Age of Disruption, Global Economic Policy, Negotiation, Communicating Policy, and Quantitative and Qualitative Research and Analysis. In my current coursework, I’ve suggested policy recommendations for: climate change’s impact on future global order, mobilizing sustainable trade practices that encourage multilateralism, Canada’s trade infrastructure impact on trade diversification amidst rising protectionism, data analysis on the true drivers of EV uptake in Canada, and selling self-sufficiency as motivation for a clean energy transition in U.S. states. In 2024, I closed my social enterprise, One Thing Message Lockets, to continue my passion for social development and governance through public policy. After completing my first Masters in Philosophy of Law in 2010, I focused my career's approach on the Democratic progress and the "marketplace of ideas". I started a company whose mission was to "fight isolation with a message in a locket" and was backed by the theory that people can create collective progress when they are brought out of social isolation and given value. Teachers, and psychologists worked with us in formal and informal settings, using our lockets as mental health aids for various programs. The lockets would bring people together with a message of love and strength inside that connected people gifting the lockets to one another. We donated a portion of sales to Pacific Postpartum Society, Battered Women’s Support Services, Lookout Society, Mexican Red Cross, Syrian Refugee Crisis, and more.