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2020 Executive Board

Stakeholder Board Representatives to the Executive Board

Chair – Avedis H Seferian

Avedis H. Seferian joined WRAP in 2004 and became its President and CEO in 2012. He has extensive knowledge of social responsibility issues within the highly complex worldwide supply chains of the apparel, textile and footwear sectors. A recognized expert in the area of social compliance and responsible sourcing, he often speaks on topics in this field at different forums around the world and has contributed to many leading trade publications and news outlets. Mr. Seferian is the Chairman of the Executive Board (and a member of the Stakeholder Board) of the Association of Professional Social Compliance Auditors (APSCA) and sits on the Impartiality Committees of several audit organizations; he also served on the Board of Advisors of the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety. Mr. Seferian began his career working for a business research and development organization before migrating over to legal research. Prior to joining WRAP, he was with a small law firm in Washington, DC. Mr. Seferian has also taught in various capacities in the business and legal arenas, including as an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland University College.  He speaks five languages, has lived in four countries and holds three degrees from three continents – a Bachelor’s in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University in India; an MBA from the American University of Armenia; and a Juris Doctor from the Georgetown University Law Center in the United States, where he was a Law Fellow and made the Dean’s List. Mr Seferian is a member of the American Bar Association and the Virginia State Bar.  He resides in Fairfax Virginia with his wife and their 2 sons.

Brendan Morrissey

Brendan Morrissey is the Senior Director for Governance on the Responsible Sourcing team at Walmart.  In this role, he oversees the development of standards and controls to mitigate supply chain risk and alignment of the Responsible Sourcing program with corporate values, Walmart’s Human Rights Statement, and corporate policies.  Brendan is responsible for maintaining Walmart’s Standards for Suppliers and other key policies and procedures, designing and operating the Responsible Sourcing audit program, managing cases and investigations, risk assessment and planning, supplier and facility administration, and internal and external Responsible Sourcing awareness.
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Prior to joining Walmart in 2015, Brendan was an attorney practicing appellate and commercial litigation with Wiley Rein LLP in Washington, D.C. and a law clerk to a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Brendan holds a JD from the University of Akron in Ohio and a BA from St. Bonaventure University in New York.  He and his wife have four children and reside in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Mark Spears

Mark Spears is an eternal optimist who believes meaningful progress results from inclusive collaborative engagement. Having retired from The Walt Disney Company after nearly thirty years, he devotes his current efforts to promoting positive Environmental and social change. In his spare time, he scours the world for emerging artisan coffee roasts and craft beer styles. 

Along with supporting APSCA via membership on its Stakeholder Board, his focus areas include serving as the Co-Chair of Sustainable Brands Advisory Board Executive Council, supporting the social entrepreneurship program at his alma mater as board member, advisor and Senior Fellow and contributing as co-founder of the Los Angeles County Chief Sustainability Officer Strategic Taskforce.

During his Disney career, Mark served in a number of senior business roles ranging from finance and strategic planning to corporate responsibility and sustainability. He served as Disney Consumer Products’ inaugural chief sustainability executive and led Disney’s involvement with The Sustainability Consortium as its first corporate Lead Director. Mark also directed Disney’s International Labor Standards program for ten years addressing labor standards and human rights in the Company’s licensing and vendor supply chains and serving as the Company’s primary spokesperson.

Before joining Disney, Mark was a senior consultant and audit professional at Arthur Young & Co. in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, specializing in the Firm’s media and entertainment, engineering and construction, and litigation consulting practices.
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Mark holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Southern California. He is also a certified public accountant and a former member of the American Arbitration Association.

A Member Representatives

Rajan Kamalanathan

Rajan Kamalanathan – Vice President for Sustainability and CSR for Bureau Veritas is based in the USA with a global mandate. Responsible for developing and managing a robust, industry leading, social, environmental and sustainability program to service the needs of suppliers, brands and retail customers.

Rajan is globally recognized as a pioneer and thought leader in supply chain sustainability.   
Previously, Director of Sustainable Supply Chain for C&A based in Hong Kong, where he led C&A’s Sustainable Supply Chain (SSC) program to secure both social and environmental compliance throughout its supply chain, including developing, implementing and managing C&A’s  zero discharge of hazardous chemicals (ZDHC) program.

Prior to that he was VP Ethical Sourcing for Walmart where he directed all sourcing-related ethical and social responsibility activities, including Walmart’s Code of Conduct, as well as ethical sourcing policies and procedures, and implemented a comprehensive social and environmental monitoring and capacity building programs.
 
In addition, Rajan was an executive board member of Global Social Compliance Program (GSCP) and was actively engaged in the development of the program to reduce audit fatigue and encourage retail and brand collaboration.
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Rajan is a graduate of University of London, Kings College.  He is also the recipient of the Sam Walton Entrepreneur of the Year Award – for his work on a Sustainable Supply Chain.

Bureau Veritas (BV) was founded in 1828, and today has leading positions in its eight business divisions via a network of 850 offices and laboratories and more than 140 countries with over 70,000 employees worldwide. The Consumer Products Services Division of BV (BVCPS) is a global division working with retailers and manufacturers of consumer products worldwide to assess their products and manufacturing processes for compliance with regulatory, quality, and performance requirements. BVCPS tests products, inspects goods, assesses factories, conducts social audits and trains personnel. BV’s proactive solutions throughout the supply chain help clients better manage risk, protect their brands, reduce costs, and cut time to market.
BV’s social compliance team consists of thought leaders and has substantial experience with social compliance program development services and auditing for many of the companies considered most active in the supply chain social compliance arena.

Justin Bettey

Justin Bettey acts as the Director of EMEA for Intertek’s supplier management business line. Key responsibilities include aligning Intertek’s portfolio of supply chain and responsible sourcing services with that of client and market needs. This includes understanding customers’ needs and providing a risk-based approach to support their business.
 
After initially working with environmental management systems Justin spent over ten years working with a number of monitoring and advisory firms in the FMCG sector. With a focus on risk and human rights subject matter Justin has been keen to develop the business case for supply chain investment and improvement.

Intertek is a FTSE 100 company listed in London since 2002. With a capitalization of 5 Billion, a global network of 42,000 Employees, 1000 Laboratories and offices in more than 100 countries, Intertek is a global leader in the Assurance, Testing, Inspection and Certification industry sector.

Effie Marinos

Effie Marinos is the Global Technical Governance Manager responsible for assuring the consistency of SGS Supply chain Assessments & Solutions services, which includes social auditing, across the global SGS network. Effie has been involved in social compliance audits for over 20 years and is actively involved with a number of multi-stakeholder initiatives and industry scheme working groups to focus on driving audit excellence and has acted as Scheme Manager for the SMETA and RJC programmes. Effie has also worked with major multi-national corporations on developing and managing their CSR audit and remediation programmes.  With a degree in Modern Languages and Linguistics, prior to joining SGS Effie worked in the Fashion and Electronics sectors.

​SGS is the world’s leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company. SGS is recognized as the global benchmark for quality and integrity. With more than 85,000 employees, SGS operates a network of over 1,800 offices and laboratories around the world.

SGS has been involved in social accountability since 1996. Having one of the largest networks of social auditors and being committed to quality and integrity, SGS is supporting APSCA with the objective to enhance the professionalism and credibility of the individuals and organizations performing independent social compliance audits.

B Member Representatives

Treasurer - Greg Gardner

Greg Gardner​ is President & CEO of Arche Advisors.  Gardner has spent the last 23 years helping global retailers and brands do the right thing for their businesses by improving working conditions and protecting workers’ rights around the world. Greg is a respected leader,  visionary, and strategic thinker in the Corporate Social Responsibility industry, supporting 500+ clients throughout the span of his career. Starting as an auditor, Greg worked his way up through the organization and served as President & CEO for 8+ years.

Greg has audited over 2,300 factories, farms, and processing plants for Fortune 500 companies in over 80 countries since 1995. He has audited coal mines in Siberia, NGOs in Burkina Faso, state-owned factories in Iraq, Kaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea, more recently conducting various training to law enforcement officers on human rights within Nigeria.  Greg has managed a global team of 350 professionals doing 22,000 CSR assessments in 150 countries each year. Greg has worked on supply chain and traceability projects in 14 African countries. His best day at work is out in the field, interviewing owners, managers, and workers in the continuous effort to better business by improving working conditions.

He earned his BA in Political Science from San Diego State University, his MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management, and completed the Executive Education Program  me in International Management at Stanford/National University of Singapore.​

Arche Advisors
Our experts have always been at the forefront of the corporate responsibility industry. Starting as supply chain auditors in 1995 just as child labor controversies engulfed Nike and Guess, our team has been dedicated to helping brands manage the social and environmental impacts of globalized supply chains ever since.

Our experts have been credited with establishing industry-standard protocols and leading supplier compliance programs. Our roster contains published and recognized experts who are invited to speak at industry events and participate in government policy decisions.

Secretary - Frank Dorssers

​Frank Dorssers is Vice President Systems, Customized Services at TÜV Rheinland. In this position he is responsible for developing TÜV Rheinland services portfolio in 3rd party supply chain auditing. Frank has extensive on the ground experience in social auditing working on behalf of various production and services industries. Pro-actively working with corporations and compliance initiatives at the highest level enabled him to have an effective network of decision makers. Frank is convinced that through constructive positive dialogue APSCA will deliver the results that the industry and stakeholders are looking for.

TUV Rheinland
The TÜV Rheinland Group is a leading provider of technical services worldwide. Founded in 1872 and headquartered in Cologne the Group employs well over 20000 people. It generates annual revenues of 1.88 billion euros.
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The Groups mission and guiding principle is to achieve sustained development of safety and quality in order to meet the challenges arising from the interaction between man, technology and the environment.

C Member​ Representative

Richard Ingrao​

Richard Ingrao is President and CEO of Accordia Global Compliance Group. Richard has worked over 23 years with dedication to improving workers’ rights as an auditor, advisor, investigator and trainer and is a well-known business leader and practitioner in the social compliance industry. Trained and accredited under multiple Standards and Code protocols, he has conducted over 1,400 audits, investigations and advisory engagements in 22 countries, globally.
Richard’s expertise is in assessment and evaluation of Environmental and Health and Safety practices and providing guidance to clients on development and improvements to management systems for supply chain compliance.

Richard founded Accordia Global Compliance Group in 2001 and has led the organization to be a respected auditing and monitoring company working on behalf of the most reputable brands and retailers. Accordia has worked along-side well-known NGO groups in the human rights compliance arena. Richard holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration degree from the State University of New York at Fredonia with concentrated studies in Finance and Economics.

Accordia Global Compliance Group
Accordia was founded in 2001 in Buffalo, New York. The company specializes in the areas of responsible sourcing, labor and human rights auditing as well as supply chain cargo security (CTPAT) auditing and advisory services. The company is headquartered in St. Augustine, FL, U.S.A and operates with 8 local offices in Shenzhen, China; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Tirrupur, India; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Karachi, Pakistan; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Cuernavaca, Mexico and has a Regional Headquarters office in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Accordia’s focus has been to provide professional, impartial and objective services to companies of all sizes, in all industries, in any location to help them manage their social, human rights and environmental impacts on stakeholders in the global supply chain.

President & CEO

Rona Starr

Rona Starr joined the Association of Professional Social Compliance Auditors (APSCA) in August 2016 as Executive Director, becoming the President & CEO when APSCA incorporated in Washington DC, January 2018. She oversees the organization’s development and the advancement of APSCA’s mission to enhance the professionalism and credibility of the individuals and organizations performing independent social compliance audits. APSCA has over 45 Member Firms and 4180 Member Auditors located in 96 countries.

Prior to joining APSCA, Rona worked for McDonald’s for 21 years in a variety of roles. She was part of the roll out of McDonald’s social compliance program within Asia in 2002; and became the global lead in 2009. In 2010, she gathered the audit firms used by McDonald’s to form an advisory board to focus on improvement within the industry. From there, numerous projects were undertaken, which included the implementation of a train the trainer program for auditors where she travelled the world to ensure calibration and continuous improvement among the service providers – which included many of the now APSCA member firms.

Rona is an accomplished and globally networked business leader with the capacity to influence at all levels of an organization. A specialist in transformational environments, she has defined expertise in risk management across emerging markets, combining a track record of success in supply chain management, administration, international business coordination and workplace compliance.

Starr has a MBA from the Australian Institute of Business.

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