Venture: Fair Trade USA
Fair Trade USA certifies goods from more than 975,000 farmers and workers in 45.

Expert: Subbu Allamaraju
VP of Search at Expedia
• Distinguished Engineer, eBay
• Sr. Principal Engineer, Yahoo 

Fair Trade USA partnered with Rippleworks to define the technical capabilities and human resources required to reach their impact goals

Fair Trade USA certifies goods from more than 975,000 farmers and workers in 45 countries across Africa, Asia, Oceania, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Since 1998, producers have earned a total financial benefit of $740 million through sales of Fair Trade Certified products, including more than $465 million in Community Development Funds and $260 million as a result of the Fair Trade Minimum Price.

Fair Trade’s top priority was identifying technologies that increase program delivery efficiency and enable scale. Fair Trade partnered with Rippleworks to plan the technical capabilities and human resources needed for their Innovation, Tech Platform, and Data teams to achieve their 2023 vision.

Rippleworks partnered with us during a key organizational inflection point as we sought to scale our model of socioeconomic and environmental impact by integrating new and modern data technologies across the global supply chains we certify.

We are better positioned for our next phase of growth due to the mentorship, frameworks, and thought-partnership offered by the Rippleworks team and our expert advisor.

—Fair Trade USA CEO Paul Rice

Fair Trade partnered with Rippleworks Expert Subbu Allamaraju, a technologist and leader who brought decades of experience from Expedia, eBay, and Yahoo. Together, they:

• Learned to write better OKRs by clearly defining meaning to stakeholders; assessed current technology stack; applied new frameworks to define new annual OKRs

• Prepared Team Leads for scaling, by setting and measuring operational goals; defined how technical teams will work together cross-org

• Defined a framework for identifying skill/role gaps based on current capabilities needed to execute 2023 vision

• Defined a framework for creating operational plans

• Prepared Fair Trade’s Innovation team for a new role in the organization; defined team purpose, goals, and operating model

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