Tina received her Bachelor of Business Administration (Honours) from Simon Fraser University in 1996 and her law degree from the University of British Columbia Law School in 2000 and then clerked at the British Columbia Court of Appeal. She completed her articles at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP (Fasken) and was called to the bar of British Columbia in 2002.
Tina was previously a partner of Fasken, a Global Arbitration Review top 100 firm (GAR 100) in 2016 and 2017. Tina has more than 20 years of experience in the resolution of complex commercial disputes. From the beginning of her career, her focus has been on arbitration as a means of dispute resolution. As an associate, she acted as tribunal secretary on many high-value international arbitration cases.
From 2003 to 2011, Tina taught international commercial disputes as an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia, School of Law. She is regularly asked to speak on the topics of arbitration and alternate dispute resolution and has authored several articles on the subjects. She has been invited to guest lecture on topics related to commercial arbitration at a number of law schools, including UBC and the University of Victoria, and arbitrator training programs such as the TCAS Gold Standard Course in Arbitration. A former Jessup mooter herself, Tina has acted as a judge in international moot competitions (the Vis East and Jessup) as well as acting as a mock arbitrator for advocacy training courses.
From 2012 to 2018, Tina was a member of the Editorial Board of the Commercial Litigation and Arbitration Review. Since 2019, she has been a member of the Advisory Board for the Canadian Journal of Commercial Arbitration. As the former Canada Reporter for the ITA Board of Reporters, Tina has regularly contributed updates on Canadian arbitration law to the Kluwer Arbitration website.
As counsel, Tina advised Canadian and international clients on dispute resolution provisions for their commercial contracts and acted as counsel in numerous domestic (Canadian) and international arbitration proceedings. She represented clients in mining, energy, forestry, transportation (rail, aviation), telecommunications, manufacturing (automotive), real estate development, information technology, construction and infrastructure (ports, hydro facilities), among others. Tina also advised clients with respect to investment disputes for claims of direct and indirect expropriation and breach of fair and equitable treatment standards. She has advised on matters under various arbitration rules including the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), American Arbitration Association (AAA), International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR), Japan Commercial Arbitration Association (JCAA), Swiss Rules, London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA), United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and the British Columbia International Commercial Arbitration Centre (BCICAC now the Vancouver International Arbitration Centre or VanIAC).
Since 2017, Tina’s practice has focused on acting as a neutral arbitrator and she has been sole arbitrator or chair in ad hoc proceedings, as well as arbitrations conducted under the auspices of the ICC, the ICDR, the AAA and VanIAC. Tina has resolved numerous types of commercial disputes, including post-merger and acquisition claims, joint venture and shareholder disputes, breach of contract (including issues of fraud and force majeure), and construction contracts. In 2018, she completed the Mediating the Litigated Case program at the Straus Institute (Pepperdine Caruso School of Law). From 2019 to 2022, she was based in Dallas, Texas.