Stolen Labor, Stolen Promises

Heather White
Thursday, May 8 at 7:30 p.m.

Heather White is Founder and President of New Standards, an organization whose mission is to work with global companies to create a humane production workplace through next-generation programs in social monitoring, management and worker trainings, and in-factory mentoring. She has advised over 300 U.S. and European companies on labor rights issues in 60 countries.

In 1995 Ms. White founded Verité, a global network of non-profit organizations and advocates operating in 60 countries to monitor factories on labor issues. Ms. White received the “Social Capitalist Award” from Fast Company magazine in 2005 for developing an innovative non-profit organization performing lead-edge research and other services using a collaborative non-profit/private sector model.

Prior to founding Verité, Ms. White worked as an import agent and consultant for 15 years with U.S. firms doing business in Asia. She holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies and a M.S. in International Political Economy from Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively.  She has done extensive research in manufacturing practices and labor law affecting outsourcing, labor issues, and human rights standards in specific regions, industries, and groups of companies.  Scientific American magazine named Ms. White as one of the "Scientific American 50” in 2003.  The award for Policy Leadership in Manufacturing recognized Ms. White’s work campaigning to extricate migrant and debt-bonded workers from virtual slavery in factories in Asia and the Middle East.

From 2001-2005 Ms. White was the labor and human rights consultant to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), for their Emerging Markets Research Project, which performs social screening of their investment portfolio, covering 27 developing countries. The $1.3 million project has been described as groundbreaking and controversial in the institutional investment community, and established Ms. White and her team as a leading resource in the assessment of country performance and compliance with international labor conventions.

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