Catharine Bacon

After a BSc (hons) in Geography at London University, Catharine entered the world of shipping by joining Tradax, part of the Cargill group, in London as Freight Merchant in September 1977. She was elected a probationer on the Baltic Exchange later that year.
38 years later she is still with Cargill, managing the London office (since 1999) and specialising in the chartering of bagged sugar. Her experience in the dry cargo field has included grain chartering from the Great Lakes and other handy sized vessels’ loading areas, bulk and bagged sugar, bagged rice and handymaxes worldwide. She has also spent some time on the wet products market. One of her roles within Cargill has been training and developing the internal trainees.
She was a ballot director of the Baltic exchange from 1994/1997 and is currently in her second term on the Board.
Other roles include a supporting member of the LMAA since 2008 on their liaison committee, trustee and now vice president of the Baltic Exchange Charitable Society and member of the Advisory Board of the ICC-Commercial Crime Services.
She is an accredited but as yet unpractised mediator, having trained with CEDR in 2012. 
She has recently undertaken and passed the module on International Arbitration from the CIArb .
She lectures for METL on the dry cargo chartering course. 
In addition, Catharine is a qualified swimming teacher and has spent several years teaching and coaching hockey.