Auret van Heerden
President and CEO
heerden@fairlabor.org x201

Jorge Perez-Lopez
Executive Director
jperez-lopez@fairlabor.org x208

Alex Wohl
Director of Communications and Outreach
awohl@fairlabor.org x205

Roopa Nair
Director of Code Implementation and Monitoring
rnair@fairlabor.org x202

HeeWon Khym
NGO and Trade Union Coordinator
hkhym@fairlabor.org x202

Sherri Ligon
Business Manager
sligon@fairlabor.org x204

Heeral Coleman
Communications Associate and University Liaison
hcoleman@fairlabor.org x222

Sarah Labowitz
Washington Coordinator
slabowitz@fairlabor.org x201

Allison Milne
Independent External Monitoring Coordinator
amilne@fairlabor.org x219

Christine Briscoe
Licensee Program Manager
cbriscoe@fairlabor.org x203

Margaret Hawley
Monitoring Program Support
margarethawley@fairlabor.org x202

Yulia Ivanovskaya
Program Support Assistant
yivanovskaya@fairlabor.org x207

Ama Ampadu
Admin Assistant/Receptionist
aampadu@fairlabor.org x202

Core Program Consultants

Tanida Disyabut
Southeast Asia Regional Manager
tdisyabut@fairlabor.org x202

Youli Ge
East Asia Regional Manager
yge@fairlabor.org x202

Richa Mittal
South Asia Regional Coordinator
rmittal@fairlabor.org x202

Aykut Kazanci
Europe, Middle East and Africa Regional Manager
akazanci@fairlabor.org x202

Auret van Heerden
President and CEO

Silvia Hirschi-Dunmore
Administrator, FLA Europe
sdunmore@fairlabor.org

The FLA thanks Molly Webb, Michael Kroll, and Annie Nguyen for the original design and the public reporting pages.

Auret van Heerden, President and CEO, comes to the FLA with thirty years experience in international human and labor rights. He began campaigning for worker rights as a young student in apartheid South Africa and co-authored a book in 1976 that called for trade union rights for black workers. He served two terms as president of the National Union of South African Students. After graduating in Industrial Sociology from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg he founded an institute that provided research and training services to trade unions and civil society groups. He was forced into exile in May 1987 after long periods of solitary confinement and torture.

He joined the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 1988 and worked on their Program of Action against Apartheid in Geneva until 1994 when the new democratic South African government appointed him Labor Attaché in the South African Permanent Mission to the UN in Geneva.

He returned to the ILO in 1996 to coordinate the Special Action Program on Social and Labor Issues in Export Processing Zones. In that capacity he worked on labor relations issues in 25 zone-operating countries and established a Swiss-funded project to improve labor relations in Special Economic Zones in China. He has written ILO reports on disinvestment and economic sanctions; Export Processing Zones (EPZs); the export garment industry and labor rights. He has moved back to his home outside Geneva and established a European subsidiary of the FLA.

Jorge Perez-Lopez -- Jorge Perez-Lopez joined the Fair Labor Association as its Executive Director after serving 31 years in the U.S. government. The former civil servant brings extensive knowledge and experience in international economics and trade relations developed during his tenure in the Bureau of International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor.

For the past 18 years, Perez-Lopez served as the Director of the Office of International Economic Affairs where he was involved in the development, implementation and negotiation of U.S. trade policies and directed a supporting research program in international economics. Most notably, he participated in the negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), serving as the lead U.S. negotiator for the Safeguards Chapter on emergency action and coordinated the Department of Labor's overall involvement in the negotiations. He also participated in the negotiation of the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) and in the agreements that emerged from the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations. More recently, he was part of the U.S. team that negotiated the labor chapter of U.S. free trade agreements with Chile, Singapore, Morocco, Australia, Central America, and the Dominican Republic, and was the U.S. lead negotiator of the labor chapter of the agreement with the Andean countries.

Perez-Lopez is the author or co-author of more than a half dozen books and numerous articles and chapters in professional journals and books. He holds a Master's and Ph.D. degree in economics from the State University of New York at Albany.

Alex Wohl -- Alex Wohl, FLA’s director of communications and outreach, has an extensive background in public policy and communications, working across a variety of disciplines, including law, labor, journalism and education. He has been Director of Communications at the U.S. Department of Education, where he served first as a speechwriter for Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley and Director of Public Affairs for the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Wohl, an attorney, was selected to be a Judicial Fellow at the U.S. Supreme Court, where he wrote speeches for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and met with visiting foreign judges and dignitaries. He also has served as a law clerk for Judge Ralph B. Guy, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, worked as an attorney at the Washington, DC-based law firm of Dickstein, Shapiro, Morin & Oshinsky and was the Supreme Court correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle.<br>

Wohl is an adjunct professor at American University in the Department of Justice, Law and Society. He is the author of numerous articles on subjects including legal affairs, education, and entertainment. Wohl received a B.A. from Brandeis University and a J.D. from the Washington College of Law at American University.

Ama Ampadu received a B.A. in International Studies from the University of Chicago. While at Chicago, she also worked as an office assistant in the Social Sciences Division Local Business Center and also at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Ama also enjoys learning foreign languages and traveling around the world. She recently returned to her hometown of Baltimore, after spending a quarter abroad in Pisa, Italy in an intensive language program. She joined the FLA in April 2004.<br>

Allison Milne is the Independent External Monitoring Coordinator. She comes to the FLA from her position as a Research Analyst for a social compliance monitoring firm, Accordia Global Compliance. Allison received her J.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School where she was awared the Professor Virginia Leary Award for outstanding academic performance in international law and the Linda S. Reynolds Award for exceptional committment to equal justice for the poor. At UB Law, Allison was the 2005-2006 Editor-in-Chief of the Buffalo Human Rights Law Review. Allison has interned with the Living Wage Commission in Buffalo, NY, Urgent Action Fund--Africa in Nairobi and Ebenezer Counseling Ministry in Kigali, Rwanda. She has a B.A. in International Relations from Wheaton College in Illinois.

Aykut Kazanci has extensive experience as a quality, safety and social compliance auditor.  He serves as the Regional Manager for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region for the FLA. Before coming to the FLA, Aykut was Lead Assessor for Bureau Veritas Quality Int. based in Istanbul; Lead Auditor and Regional Coordinator for Verité; Lead Consultant and Trainer for an International Labor Organization-European Union textile sector program; Lead Assessor for British Standards Institution; Lead Auditor with ITS-Intertek Labtest in Istanbul; Safety Trainer for Cement Manufacturers Employer Union; CSR Consultant for GTZ; and Lead Assessor for the JO-IN project.  Earlier in his career, he worked with the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights in a project in Turkey.  He has been trained on ISO 9000, OHSAS 18000 and SA 8000.  He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering.

Christine Briscoe is the Licensee Program Manager. She came to FLA from the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC, where she assisted Canadian companies in multiple sectors do business in the Mid-Atlantic States. She holds an MBA from the University of Maryland with a focus on International Business, Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics. At Maryland, Christine served as liaison to the university’s Net Impact (Leaders for Better Business) chapter on behalf of more than 500 part-time students. She is a longtime member of Women in International Trade and won the Member of the Year Award in 2002 for the professional development programs she developed; in 2005, she was nominated to the organization’s Board of Directors. She also serves on the Board of the DC Sustainable Business Network. Christine grew up in Canada and Germany, and holds a BA from the University of Ottawa and a postgraduate teaching certificate from the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

Tanida Disyabut joined the FLA as the Regional Coordinator for Southeast Asia in August 2004. Tanida attributes her extensive knowledge of social issues to a six-year career as a journalist and as a program manager of human rights and compliance programs.

With a B.A. from Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Arts, she started her career as a journalist at the Bangkok Post newspaper, a leading English newspapers in Thailand. Her reporting covered environmental and social issues in Thailand where issues ranged from child labor, workers' rights, the rights of the disabled to male and female prostitution.

It was her exposure to the human rights field that led her to Reebok where she served as manager of the Human Rights Program in Thailand. She was instrumental in the development of the workers' communication and breastfeeding program in the workplace. She left after four years to join Nike as the manager of the Compliance Program in Thailand and Bangladesh.

Youli Ge - Prior to joining the FLA, Youli worked as the China Country Director of Global Alliance for Workers and Communities (GA) in Guangdong Province for four and a half years. GA's initiative focused on incorporating worker and community development into CSR practice through a multi-stakeholder partnership in China. Between 1994 - 1999, Youli was the national program officer in UNDP China working on issues of gender equity, poverty alleviation, microenterprise development in disadvantaged communities. She was a participant and an observer of women's NGO movement in Beijing. Youli has a MPA from Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and a graduate certificate in Cross-cultural Communication, as well as a BA of English Literature from Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Margaret Hawley comes to the Fair Labor Association from Levi Strauss & Co., where she was a code of conduct specialist in 2001 and prior to that worked in Product Management. She earned an MA in Geography from the University of Washington, focusing on issues of globalization and has a BA in Political Science and English Literature from Swarthmore College. She has extensive experience teaching and also working with non-profit organizations, including work on sexual harassment prevention with The Union Institute's Center for Women in Washington, DC. She has worked and/or studied in Latin America, Asia and Europe. She joined the FLA in February 2002.

HeeWon Khym serves as the NGO and Trade Union Coordinator for the Fair Labor Association. She brings to the FLA years of international and domestic labor rights experience. Her dedication to labor rights began when she organized immigrant workers to New York City. Since then, she has worked for the Worker Rights Consortium and UNITE HERE coordinating and supporting international worker rights campaigns. In addition to her professional work experience, HeeWon currently serves as a board member of Educators for Social Responsibility and sat on the board of SweatFree Communities. HeeWon has a B.A. in Geology from Boston College and a Master of Public Policy and Administration from Columbia University.

Sarah Labowitz is the FLA's Washington Coordinator, in addition to serving as Secretary of the Board. Prior to joining the FLA in July 2005, Sarah was the Washington Coordinator for the Clergy and Laity Network, a group of politically active, progressive people of faith. Sarah holds a B.A. in History from Grinnell College, where she served as a member of the Rosenfield Committee on Human Rights, International Relations, and Public Affairs. She has traveled and worked in East Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Richa Mittal is a Regional Coordinator at the Fair Labor Association. She was born and raised in India. After completing her first Master's in Human Nutrition at the University of Delhi, she pursued a Masters in Public Health degree at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. For two years she was actively involved in managing a health program for garment workers in Bangladesh through MID and has written about the existing labor health issues. She joined FLA in June 2003.

Roopa Nair is the Director of Code Implementation and Monitoring for the Fair Labor Association. Roopa has a background in international development with a focus on globalization and changing labor economies. She has worked in non-profit, corporate and academic sectors in Asia, Europe and North America with a particular interest in gender and development. Before joining the FLA, she worked on these issues with a variety of worker communities (informal sector labor, migrant labor, garment workers and high-tech labor). Most recently, she was the Corporate Responsibility Compliance Manager for South Asia at Nike, Inc where she developed a regional team to work on social compliance systems in India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Roopa recently graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, England, with research focusing on globalization and new industries in India. She has a BA and MA from McGill University, Canada.