"Leveraging Market Systems for Good: Transforming Global Supply Chains and Protecting those Within — The Case of Slavery", 23 April 2015

Globalization has created opportunities to reach new customers in new markets and to source materials and even finished goods from all over the globe. But this increasing complexity of global operations presents considerable challenges with regard to supply chain management...[including] ensuring the safety and wellbeing of each employee....[In addition to action by companies, to] combat modern-day slavery, policymakers have established norms and have enacted and enforced laws, and NGOs have partnered with businesses, working behind the scenes to audit their supply chains, while at the same time serving as public advocates.

[Speakers:]

• Stella Dawson, Chief Correspondent, Governance and Anti-Corruption at Thomson Reuters Foundation [A major gap is "about responsibility and accountability.  There needs to be much more deepened conversation around business responsibility for human rights.  It's in its relatively early stages.  We have a number of corporations who are doing extremely good jobs.  There are global principles such as the UN [Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights] but the degree to which corporate America, certainly,...has embedded the idea that it must be responsible throughout its supply chain, and that this is a risk not merely because consumers might not want to buy their products anymore, but [because] they are corporate citizens, and they have to dig deeper in order to make sure that they're not violating the rights of other people -- that, I do not see either very well covered [and] reported on, or corporations held to account."]
• Nina Smith, Founding Executive Director at GoodWeave International 
• Marcus Bleasdale, at Documentary Photographer 
• Dan Viederman, CEO at Verité 
• Randy Newcomb, President and CEO at Humanity United [moderator]
• Justin Dillon, Founder and CEO at Made In A Free World 

[refers to SAP, Target, Restoration Hardware]