Staff Leadership
Jeff Vockrodt, President and CEO
Jeff Vockrodt is FLA’s President and CEO. He has been working to advance workers’ rights and responsible business practices for two decades, as an organizer, attorney, policymaker, and executive. He has held leadership positions at organizations including the US Department of Labor and Climate Jobs NY and has advanced human rights in the workplace through his work with labor unions, the International Labor Organization, and the law firm of James & Hoffman.
Vockrodt has been recognized as an innovative nonprofit leader, particularly for his work at the intersection of labor standards and climate action. Throughout his career, he has sought out opportunities to work closely with a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including business leaders, investors, labor leaders, tech developers, academics, and public officials.
Vockrodt graduated from the University of Minnesota with BSB, JD, and MPP degrees and completed an MBA at Columbia Business School. He serves on multiple boards, including the CHPE Green Economy Fund’s advisory board and the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable’s board of directors. He has also served on the Shift Commission, as a guest lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, and as a judge for MIT’s Inclusive Innovation Challenge.
Mari-lou Dupont, Senior Vice President, Social Compliance
Mari-lou Dupont is FLA’s Senior Vice President, Social Compliance. She previously joined FLA as Director, Social Compliance-Accreditation and brings over 15 years of experience advocating for human rights and decent working conditions globally.
Dupont started her career as an anthropologist and lawyer working alongside First Nations in her native Canada. Based in Paris from 2013-2017, Dupont acted as a legal expert on investment policies, responsible business conduct and grievance mechanisms at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. While in France, she also advised the private sector on upcoming due diligence legislation as a consultant. From 2018-2022, she oversaw the promotion and implementation of the Labour Principles of the United Nations Global Compact. In that role, she managed a portfolio of labor and decent work-related projects, including the Decent Work in Global Supply Chains Action Platform — a group of multinational enterprises and partners committed to taking collective action and developing tools to improve working conditions and human rights in their supply chains.
Dupont holds degrees in anthropology and law from the University of Montreal, and successfully completed the bar examinations of Quebec and Paris. She is fluent in English and French.
Shelly Heald Han, Executive Vice President and Chief of Staff
Shelly Heald Han is FLA’s Executive Vice President and Chief of Staff. In this role she works to ensure the organization can efficiently meet its mission by overseeing special projects and strategic communications, and implementing the strategic plan. Han also manages FLA’s Civil Society Caucus, facilitates outreach to labor groups and other stakeholders, and coordinates the organization’s public affairs activities that promote labor rights around the globe. Han’s career has centered on human rights advocacy and corporate social responsibility.
Before joining the FLA in 2016, Han was a senior policy advisor to members of Congress at the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. There, she wrote legislation, organized congressional hearings, and launched human rights advocacy campaigns focused on combatting corruption, supporting human rights defenders and journalists, and advancing online freedom. From 2000–06, Han held policy positions on trade, national security and immigration at the Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security. Prior to joining the government, she worked in the private sector helping companies ethically do business in international markets.
Han has a master’s degree in international commerce and policy from George Mason University and a double-major undergraduate degree in political science and East Asian Studies is from the University of Arizona. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, and in her spare time is a professional photographer.
Stacy Hope, Senior Vice President, Communications
Stacy Hope is FLA’s Senior Vice President, Communications, bringing to the role more than two decades developing and implementing integrated communications programs that successfully articulate complex global issues and build support for action among the media, policymakers, academia, civil society, and the general public.
Prior to joining FLA, Hope directed all communications activities and served as the primary spokesperson for a bipartisan, bicameral US government commission promoting human rights and democracy across North America, Europe, and Central Asia.
From 2008–2014, Hope counseled European Union officials on multifaceted programs effectively connecting American audiences with crucial European political issues. Her experience also includes leading national and international communications programs for the British Council, the United Kingdom’s cultural relations organization; managing public relations programs at a major US trade association; and serving as the external relations officer for the Department of State’s Fulbright Student Program at the Institute of International Education.
Hope launched her career at Golin, an international public and media relations firm. She holds a bachelor’s in international relations and journalism from the University of Southern California, a master’s of science in international relations from the London School of Economics, and a professional diploma from the UK’s Chartered Institute of Marketing. She is a published author, a Fellow of the Truman National Security Project, and has held numerous volunteer leadership positions.
Richa Mittal, Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer
Richa Mittal is Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at FLA. An ardent advocate of human and labor rights for over two decades, Mittal has pursued the advancement of human rights due diligence in complex supply chains in both manufacturing to agriculture. She is a recognized leader in building successful multi-stakeholder coalitions that bring together businesses, civil society organizations, and governments to tackle topics ranging from child protection, forced labor, and responsible recruitment to gender justice, living income, and living wage.
Mittal is the chief architect of FLA’s agriculture accreditation program, innovation program, and various strategic partnerships. She joined FLA in 2003 and has worked in the US, Asia, and Europe.
Mittal frequently speaks at conferences organized by universities, businesses, and UN agencies. She holds an MPH from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (USA), and a MS in human ecology from the University of Delhi (India). She currently resides in Switzerland with her family.
Michiko Shima, Acting Senior Vice President, Agriculture
Michiko Shima is Acting Senior Vice President, Agriculture at FLA. She has more than two decades of experience working with small and medium-sized enterprises as well as large corporations on human rights and environmental diligence, ESG/reputational risk strategies, and management systems. She has advised and supported companies to achieve their objectives with external supply chain partners.
Shima is a proven leader in strengthening and improving labor rights and working conditions. Prior to joining FLA, she managed ESG due diligence and performance reviews of complicated financial investments, ranging from microfinance to financial derivatives, at the World Bank Group. She also conducted a modern slavery assessment of a global shoemaker and developed an analytical tool at a consulting company to estimate the origins of forced labor victims in destination countries based on publicly available data.
Shima is trained as the lead auditor in several schemes including Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil Chain of Custody; Bonsucro Chain of Custody; International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 on environmental management systems; and Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series 18001 (current ISO 45001). She has an MBA in international business and finance from George Washington University and a master’s degree in environmental sciences and policy from the Johns Hopkins University.
Sif Thorgeirsson, Senior Vice President, Investigations and Engagement
Sif Thorgeirsson is Senior Vice President, Investigations and Engagement at FLA. She joined FLA in December 2018, and now leads the work of the Fair Labor Investigations team and oversees the University Program.
Thorgeirsson is an experienced business and human rights professional as well as a US-trained lawyer. Before joining FLA, she was an independent business and human rights consultant working on projects across areas including company human rights policies and international trade and human rights. Prior to that, Thorgeirsson spent a decade at the Business & Human Rights Resource Center where she launched and managed the Corporate Legal Accountability program — the Resource Centre’s hub focused on access to remedy and the legal responsibility of businesses for human rights abuses. Before joining the Resource Centre, she was a Researcher at Yale Law School on international human rights issues (including business and human rights). Thorgeirsson started her career as an associate at a large Washington, DC law firm where she worked five years focusing on project development and finance in the energy sector, international law, and corporate law.
Thorgeirsson received her law degree from George Washington University Law School, and attended the Oxford University Summer Programme in International Human Rights Law. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history and political science from Canada’s McGill University. Fluent in English and Icelandic, Thorgeirsson is also proficient in Spanish and French, and lives in Washington, DC.