Tan Sri Datuk Dr. Rebecca Fatima Sta Maria is a Senior Advisor to The Asia Group, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Prior to joining The Asia Group, Dr. Sta Maria was the first woman to serve as Executive Director of the APEC Secretariat from 2019 to 2024 based in Singapore after a long career as a top-level Malaysian civil servant and trade negotiator.
Dr. Sta Maria served as Secretary-General of the Malaysian Ministry of International Trade and Industry from December 2010 to July 2016, overseeing the formulation of Malaysia’s international trade policies and positions. She regularly took the lead in their implementation as chief negotiator for bilateral and regional free trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
Dr. Sta Maria played an integral role in Malaysia’s participation in multilateral forums such as APEC, where she often represented her economy during the APEC Ministers’ Responsible for Trade Meetings and the Small and Medium Enterprises Ministerial Meetings. She also chaired the ASEAN body that drafted the ASEAN Economic Community 2015 Blueprint as well as the ASEAN Economic Community 2025 Blueprint.
An accomplished academic and writer, Dr Sta Maria received the American Academy of Human Resource Development’s Malcolm Knowles Award for the best dissertation of the year in the field of human resource development and awards from the University of Georgia. In 2017, she authored a book about her personal slice of Malaysian heritage and cuisine: The Smell of Home.
Dr. Sta Maria received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Malaya, her master’s degree from the University of Putra Malaysia, and her doctorate from The University of Georgia.