CEO
Integrated Trade Finance, LLC
Jeffrey has over 30 years of experience in international trade and project finance, having worked and lived in 7 countries. He earned his BA in International Affairs from the University of Nebraska, with studies in Europe. His MBA is from Thunderbird, the School of Global Management, ranked #1worldwide in 2025 for International Trade. His career includes senior management positions at NYSE-listed private corporations, the US Department of Commerce, and managing ITF for 17 years.
Under his leadership, ITF has expanded to 45 cities worldwide, arranging and advising on over $4.7B in trade and project finance in over 85 countries. Although born and raised in the Midwest United States, he has had a lifelong passion for international work.
Today, ITF envisions that the key to global peace and prosperity lies in mutual understanding and cooperation in transnational business, where cultures, ideas, unique competencies, and comparative advantages merge to spawn new opportunities for us to advance as one human population. Thinking globally, acting locally combined with a burning sense of perseverance and leveraging intelligent contributions from global partners is the key to solving complex issues and providing our clients the solutions they need.
Kamins earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in International Affairs Emerging Markets in 1995 from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, including study abroad in Europe in 1994 at the Univerzity Palackého in Olomouc, Czech Republic, and the Irish Institute of European Studies in Leuven, Belgium. He also focused on Latin America and graduated with proficiency in Spanish.
After earning his Bachelor of Arts, he ventured to Moldova with only $4,000 in cash and without knowing Russian. He found work at an American oil company. He then went on to found the American Chamber of Commerce in Moldova and became its president. conducting negotiations alongside Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and PriceWaterhouse Coopers with the Prime Minister of Moldova, Mr. Ion Ciubuc in 1998 to promote US trade and investment into Moldova. As a result of living in Moldova, Kamins became proficient in Russian.
After Moldova, Kamins pursued an MBA-MIM from the world's number one ranked international business school, Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management (today the School of Global Management, and part of Arizona State University). He graduated in 2000, focusing on emerging markets and finance.
The United States Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration, "BISNIS" Program offered Kamins a position as the Country Officer for Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Moldova, and the Industry Officer for the aerospace, construction, e-business, franchising, automotive and chemical sectors working with 12 republics of the former USSR. He traveled often to Moscow, Russia, Kyiv, Ukraine, and other locations to meet with government officials and assist US companies in expanding their markets and making investment decisions. He served as the TDY Commercial Attaché at the US Embassy in Kyiv, and was selected to be Commercial Attaché at the US Embassy in Moscow. Kamins is humbled to have assisted in managing a portfolio of over $1B in trade and investment transactions with major corporations such as Subway, Harley Davidson, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Walmart, Boeing, Ford, GM, Hughes, Caterpillar, CASE Construction, Ace Hardware and many others in developing trade and investment opportunities.
After careful consideration, Kamins decided to move to the private sector and accepted a position with RWE NUKEM GmbH, part of the German utility conglomerate RWE AG, which owned and traded major nuclear fuel assets from the CIS countries. He worked as a nuclear fuel trader, responsible for buying uranium in U3O8 form and UF6 from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, converting and enriching it in Kazakhstan and Russia, and selling it worldwide. He also helped manage the financing and risk management for the mining and trading operations. Kamins gained access to the global energy industry by interfacing with suppliers and major utilities worldwide. He also acquired proficiency in German as a result of living in Germany and later in Switzerland.
In 2010, Kamins was invited by AGCO Corporation (NYSE: AGCO) to be Finance Director for the Central and Eastern Europe region. This allowed him to stay focused on the region he knew the best, which generated the highest growth and volume in agricultural equipment sales due to the massive scale of the agricultural holding companies. Based in Neuhausen am Rheinfall, Switzerland, Kamins extensively traveled the region supporting lines of credit to the many AGCO distribution partners across the region, overseeing finance staff and supporting the sales team, setting up and managing retail finance partnership programs and directly managing the financing for large key account projects aggregately contributing to over $400M per year in business.
Based on his previous experience, Mr. Kamins founded ITF in 2008 to assist other manufacturers in the agriculture sector with solutions he had developed at Valmont Industries. ITF registered as a US company, but focused on market building in Ukraine, Russia, and the rest of the CIS. Kamins resided part of each year in Kyiv, Ukraine, to establish a regional presence to support US manufacturers in offering financing to large Ukrainian agriculture equipment buyers, often operating over 50,000 hectares. ITF expanded quickly in the region, focusing on Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, the Baltics, Romania, Turkey and other markets. ITF began with agents in 5 cities, mainly in Europe and the CIS countries, focusing on agriculture, construction and transportation equipment finance.
Since 2018, ITF embarked on another major initiative by supporting exporter manufacturers in growing core target markets through integrating financing into their sales process and assisting them to expand distribution partners. ITF developed a 4-pillar approach that included: 1) retail finance; 2) wholesale finance for dealers; 3) key account customer finance; and 4) expanding distribution channels. ITF identified these four areas as the most important factors influencing business growth and specifically designed these solutions to apply to both mature and emerging markets. Since 2018, ITF has successfully built over 88 financial partnerships between suppliers and banks, in more than 30 countries worldwide.
[ ITF also recognized the potential instability of the Ukrainian and Russian markets and gradually shifted its focus to Africa. Today, ITF is active in 22 African countries, arranging financing for transactions and projects. Given Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, shifting focus to Africa proved to be the right choice, as ITF's activities there have now surpassed the company's volume in the Eurasia region. ITF appointed 7 directors across Africa to ensure coverage of all major parts of the continent. Fortunately, due to this recalibration and refocus, ITF successfully supported its original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and engineering-procurement-construction (EPC) clients in growing their business in Africa. ITF achieved this by collaborating with over 25 local and regional banks, numerous Export Credit Agencies (ECA's) worldwide and Development Financial Institutions (DFI's) to build financing programs that included specialized trade and project finance solutions.
ITF leveraged its years of building an international network and experience with major manufacturers to bring a new dimension and fresh message to more US manufacturers by creating a series of practical seminars, called "International Finance for Sales - Practical Seminar." ITF's seminars included cooperation with several major banks in the Midwest United States, including Bank of America, First National Bank of Omaha, Commerce Bank, Mutual of Omaha, Bankers Trust, Comerica Bank and more. ITF's seminars also included panelists from the US Export-Import Bank, Euler Hermes (Allianz), the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, the US Small Business Administration and more. Many executives from exporting manufacturers attended these events between 2017 and 2020 until COVID-19 arrived. ITF had established itself as a recognized brand and authority on the subject of international trade finance.ITF’s seminars were held in Chicago, St. Paul, Des Moines, Kansas City, Omaha, St. Louis, Dallas, Denver and Springfield, Missouri.
