Empathetic leader creating integrity-driven, impactful Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs
I mentor, coach, and train companies, organizations, suppliers, teams, consumers, and leaders to provide knowledge in their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) journey.
My approach involves strategic planning and thoughtful budgeting tactics that ensure organizational objectives are met and stakeholder interests are managed, using management system frameworks that focus on continuous improvement principles.
I have over twenty years of experience training and setting up CSR programs for organizations and major international sportswear and luxury brands, including UN ILO/Better Work-Better Factories Cambodia, Verité, Nike, Columbia Sportswear, Nordstrom, and REI.
I teach Managing Corporate Responsibility as part of the Milgard School of Business and am involved in the Center for Leadership and Social Responsibility at the University of Washington Tacoma, as well as leading webinars and providing education for Mosaic CSR on how to implement labor laws.
I work directly with suppliers and sub-suppliers on code of conduct implementation, such as Bolt Threads. I am also an active member /participant of the American Sustainable Business Network (ASBN) and provided technical expertise in the early development of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) social and environmental assessment/measurement tools and more!
Proven results include:
Developing sustainable CSR program policies and procedures focused on factory/supplier audit procedures
Creating tracking systems and processes to measure CSR initiatives against KPIs
Engaging stakeholders (executives, factory owners, managers, workers, etc) to gain buy-in and support for CSR initiatives
Creating and delivering training programs providing clarity to defined responsibilities, accountabilities, data accuracy, expectations, outcomes, progress tracking, report generation, and risk evaluation based on findings
My Story
Managing social responsibility and sustainability efforts across the supply chain is about (so) much more than meeting legal standards. It reflects a moral obligation to be kind and compassionate towards one another and to the environment. Yet, delivering this requires collaborative skills and experiences shaped by who we are and our purpose.
As a very small child, I worked alongside my mother in the rice fields of our village during the Cambodian genocide. By the time I was four, my mother understood that we would both starve to death if I remained with her, so she sent me away to stay with friends in a nearby village. I never saw her again.
When the war ended, I was five years old. I no longer had my parents to protect me and I had to “earn my keep”. I worked from sunrise to late in the evening every single day, selling waffles at sunrise, collecting firewood and water during the day, and making dinner for the family I lived with every night. At the end of each day, I’d crawl into my “bed” - a hard bamboo floor in a corner of a hut.
We know this today as child labor, forced labor, slavery . . . but as a child, I knew it as my reality and the only world I knew at the time. It is a practice dictated by a culturally bound tradition of employing children involuntarily.
As a result of my childhood, I am driven to lead CSR initiatives with empathy and understanding, with the goal of providing workers with the opportunities that I never had: to be heard, to escape being vulnerable to abuse, and to find a way towards a better life.
Advisory Team
Kate A Larsen
Kate founded SupplyESchange, the Environmental and Social of ESG, and human rights in Supply Chains. She has 20+ years of experience in Responsible Sourcing and Supply Chains and environmental and Social issues management. Kate was the first Asia Corporate Responsibility Manager for Burberry, then went on to be the Global Director of Responsible Sourcing for the USA-listed largest childrenswear retailer in North America, Principal Consultant ESG-Human Rights in ERM Environmental Resources Management and TCP, and worked on industry collaboration efforts with Sustainability teams from most of the leading retail, sporting and outdoors brands, and in the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) and ILO Better Work, etc. She advocates the Transparency movement through external initiatives, data publishing (such as ILO Better Work and the Accord), and transparent Brand Due Diligence assessment and for continuous improvement in purchasing practices by multi-stakeholder initiatives such as Fairwear. In recent years, Kate has trained and supported Procurement and Investment teams to understand the ESG and Business Human Rights Due Diligence steps expected of Companies and how Companies can deliver these, primarily to manage global supply chain risks and deliver positive social impacts in livelihood improvements for the most marginalized.
Janet Gilbert
Janet is a tailor and fiber artist with an MS in Sustainable Management. With a strong affinity toward garment workers, she is focused on the well-being of all supply chain workers and sustainable economic development. She works on a variety of projects in the CSR space, such as gathering and collating research for a presentation on Human Rights Due Diligence, organizing and designing training on Social Responsibility, and advising on Private Sector Engagement for the benefit of supply chain workers.