Law, Politics, and Friendship: Lunch with Ambassador Katherine Tai and Florida Supreme Court Justice John Couriel

Join the Institute of Politics for a special lunchtime conversation with Ambassador Katherine Tai, former United States Trade Representative and IOP Fall 2025 Resident Fellow, and Justice John Couriel of the Florida Supreme Court. Together, they will reflect on their experiences in public service, exploring how law, politics, and friendship have influenced the course of their careers. This discussion will offer unique insights into bipartisan leadership and principled decision-making across branches of government and levels of public service.

Please register with a valid Harvard email address. In keeping with our long tradition at the IOP to ensure honest and candid discussions of politics, this conversation is off-the-record.

About Justice John Couriel

John D. Couriel is the 90th Justice of the Florida Supreme Court. Justice Couriel was born in Miami, Florida in 1978. He is married to Rebecca L. Toonkel, M.D. They have two children.

Justice Couriel received his A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard College in 2000 and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2003. He clerked for the Honorable John D. Bates of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia before joining Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York. His practice there included securities offerings, mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcy matters, and investigations. In 2009, he became an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. He prosecuted hundreds of federal offenses, including international money laundering, public integrity, healthcare fraud, and human trafficking crimes. In 2013, he joined Kobre & Kim LLP, where he specialized in cross-border disputes and investigations relating to financial products and services, asset recovery, and government enforcement defense, with an emphasis on clients in Latin America.

Justice Couriel is a native speaker of Spanish. His parents emigrated from Cuba in the 1960s, his father as one of approximately 14,000 unaccompanied minors welcomed to the United States as part of Operation Pedro Pan.

He was appointed to the Florida Supreme Court by Governor Ron DeSantis on June 1, 2020.

About Ambassador Katherine Tai

Ambassador Katherine Tai is an expert on international economic policy and diplomacy and has spent her career advancing just, people-centered policies on the world stage.

Ambassador Tai served as the 19th United States Trade Representative. As a member of President Biden’s Cabinet, Ambassador Tai was the principal trade advisor, negotiator, and spokesperson on U.S. trade policy from March 2021 to January 2025. Her vision and leadership shaped the first worker-centered trade policy in U.S. history, harnessing the power of international relations and trade to enhance workers’ rights in the United States and across the globe. In addition to leading U.S. participation at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and forums like the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the trade tracks at the G20 and G7, Ambassador Tai traveled to all 50 states as United States Trade Representative, reaching out directly to small business owners, workers, family farmers and ranchers, engaging communities in recognition of the need for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to speak for the interests of the entire U.S. economy, not only its largest players.

Prior to her unanimous Senate confirmation, Ambassador Tai spent nearly 2 decades in public service focusing on crafting, monitoring, and enforcing U.S. and international trade laws. She previously served the Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives as Chief Trade Counsel and Trade Subcommittee Staff Director. In that role, she played a pivotal role during the first Trump administration in the re-negotiation and ratification of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement. She is also an experienced WTO litigator. From 2007 to 2014, Ambassador Tai developed and tried cases for USTR, eventually becoming the agency’s Chief Counsel for China Trade Enforcement.

Ambassador Tai graduated from Yale University and Harvard Law School. She began her career practicing law in the private sector, clerking for federal judges in the Districts of Columbia and Maryland, and teaching English in Guangzhou, China. She is fluent in Mandarin.