Board of Directors

Marcie Boyer, Board Treasurer
Co-Founder, Flavours of Life, New London, CT

Towards the end of a 10 years career developing IT systems in the pharmaceutical industry and getting burnt out from corporate politics, Marcie and her life partner David spent a weekend “discovering” their passions.  Celebrating differences, respecting others & their culture, exotic travel, fairness, justice, living life to the fullest - sense of purpose, a meaningful existence were top of their list!

Four years ago and with this list in hand, they started a new adventure with a fair trade retail store.  Since then, Marcie has grown her business from a part-time venture selling at festivals & markets to a regionally-known fair trade store.  They have also forged partnerships with local schools, universities, and other community organizations by speaking about fair trade as invited guests, sponsoring student events, working with research students on global issues, as well as assisting the development of a 4 year program on social entrepreneurship.  Through her work, Marcie has also sponsored an interscholastic fair trade conference, hosted the Peace & Justice film series, helped to start a food co-op and supported community gardening/farming projects. As they grow, Marcie will continue to promote an awareness of history and an appreciation of culture through the provision of art, crafts, food, and music.

Monika Firl
Producer Relations Manager, Cooperative Coffees, Montreal, QC

Monika Firl is currently the Producer Relations manager for Cooperative Coffees, a green coffee importing cooperative comprised of 24 independent, Fair Trade coffee roasters in Canada and the USA and serves as the manager of CoopSol, the Special Projects and Communications office of Cooperative Coffees, located in Montreal, QC.

She comes to the FTF Board with 18 years of hands-on experience in Fair Trade, traversing diverse terrain such as: founding and directing a center in San Salvador for the exchange of information on alternative technology, coordinating a regional program within the Campesino network for information exchange on production practices for organic coffee and market alternatives and direct support in technical training, and cooperative development support, (while living in Central America and Mexico from 1991 to 2000); to conducting the pre-launch promotion of TransFair USA and participating in the formation of FLO (1996), and recently (2007) serving on the FTF strategic planning committee.

Monika comes to the FTF Board from this perspective of diversity and with the expectation that we can bridge our collective wisdom to strengthen FTF as a network serving dedicated Fair Traders across product and geographic lines.

Manish Gupta
Founder, Handmade Expressions, Austin, TX

Manish Gupta has a professional background in engineering and operations. He has extensive work experience as a plant manager for a chemical industry company in India, and Operations Manager for Dell in Austin, Texas. Before working at Dell, Manish earned his Masters in Operations Management from the University of Michigan at Ann Harbor. His professional life had been enriched by his experiences, yet he felt like something was missing.

Manish came across the concept of fair trade while helping his family with a marketing project. He took some time off and traveled within rural India. He met a number of artisans and realized that they needed help. He saw immense sadness in those hands that create such beautiful things. Not only were these people suffering, but a number of traditional art forms were fading away. He realized he could use his skills and opportunities to create a difference in their lives and at the same time create a fulfilling path for him. That is when he decided to form Handmade Expressions. He now leads the company and is in charge of the overall business development.

Carrie Hawthorne
Executive Director, Partners for Just Trade, St. Louis, MO

Carrie graduated from Ohio State University in 2001 with a dual major in Spanish and International Studies and a specialty in World Economy and Business.  Carrie then spent three years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala.  She worked for two years in education as an Environmental Management Specialist but once Carrie learned to weave with a traditional Mayan backstrap loom, she began assisting Guatemalan weavers in product design and business development. Carrie extended her service by a year to start up a small business of female weavers, Tejedoras de Salacuim, in a remote village in Alta Verapaz.
 
After traveling throughout Latin America, Carrie returned to the U.S. and worked in Washington DC with the Fair Trade Federation and Fair Trade Resource Network planning the first national Fair Trade conference in 2005. She then worked as Marketing Coordinator at Green America before moving to St. Louis to become the first employee of Partners for Just Trade (PJT), a non-profit retail and wholesale organization. Carrie now runs PJT out of her home office in a small town nestled in the beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains in Northern California. She is the treasurer of the board of directors of Quincy Natural Foods Cooperative, a member of her local time bank, and enjoys traveling, live music, hiking, skiing, and laughing.

Serena Sato
Marketing Manager, SERRV, Madison, WI

Serena Sato is currently the director of marketing for SERRV, and has worked in their marketing department since 2002. SERRV currently partners with 75 artisan and farmer groups in 36 countries, and market their products through consumer, retail, and church channels. It is a nonprofit organization with sixty years of experience in alternative trade and development strategies.

Before joining SERRV, Serena spent six years in Tokyo working with People Tree in producer relations, product development and imports. Serena holds a Masters degree in International Development from the Patterson School at the University of Kentucky, and a Bachelors in International Studies with minors in History and Agricultural Economics.

Serena happily resides in an co-housing community that shares land with an urban organic farm and community gardens, along with her Japanese husband and two sons who choose Divine Chocolate "because it's fair trade."

Brian Smucker, Secretary
Co-Owner, Baksheesh, Sonoma, CA

Brian Smucker is the president, co-owner, and manager of Baksheesh,  a fair trade retailer selling Third World crafts with stores in Sonoma, Healdsburg, and St. Helena, CA. He helped to build Baksheesh into one of the largest fair trade retailers in North America, with 2006 sales of $1.1 million in 2 stores and double-digit growth every year. Previously, he worked for Ten Thousand Villages as store planter and regional sales manager. He also authored their fixtures design manual, rewrote their retail store manual, and presented a dozen seminars and workshops to other managers. As store planters, Brian and his wife Candi developed the store start-up model that Villages continues to adapt and use today. Brian also serves on the membership screening committee of the Fair Trade Federation and has served on over a dozen nonprofit boards. To support the fair trade movement, Brian produces a report each year based on sales at 8 top-selling fair trade stores and Baksheesh provides start-up consulting for fair traders around the country, as well as internships.

Jacque St. James-Wong
Marketing Director, dzi, Tibet Collection, East Hampton, MA

Kevin Ward, Board Chair
President, Global Crafts, Edgewater, FL

Kevin is currently the president of Global Crafts, a fair trade import and wholesale company. Kevin's interest in fair trade took on a practical application when he was placed in Kisumu, Kenya as a Computer Science Lecturer at Kisumu National Polytechnic in 1999. As a VSO Volunteer from 1999 - 2002. Kevin used his interest in e-commerce and Fair Trade to co-founded Global Crafts as an online project to support the local artisans in the community he was placed.

Kevin's first career was as a chef, working in small French restaurants in the UK for about 8 years. He returned to education in his mid 20's, gaining a BA in Sociology, a Post Graduate Teaching Certificate, and a MSc in Computing and Information Systems from Greenwich University, London. He was employed as Area Head of Computing in a Further and Higher Education College in London for several years before becoming a volunteer.

Kelly Weinberger, Board Vice-Chair
Founder & President, WorldFinds, Chicago, IL

Kelly founded WorldFinds after a year-and-a-half spent traveling throughout Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She was compelled to do something positive to help provide income and opportunities to the women she met in the developing world. So, she used her eye for design and her 10 years of marketing experience to put together the plan for WorldFinds - a fair trade wholesaler with a focus on style. WorldFinds became a member of the FTF in 2001 in its first full year of existence. She continues to work closely with her artisan groups on product design and development, while expanding the business's presence throughout North America.

A graduate from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana with a BS in Advertising and a minor in Asian Studies, Kelly directed the marketing for a K-12 social studies publisher, and spent time volunteering at women's shelters and international education projects. Kelly lives in the Chicago area with her husband & partner David and their two small children.