Board of Trustees

The Board of Trustees is responsible for fiduciary and programmatic guidance and oversight to ensure Electronics Watch achieves its mission and purpose and operates legally, ethically, and soundly. The Board approves the annual budget and seeks to ensure adequate financial resources to advance the Electronics Watch mission. It establishes broad organisational and financial policies and strategic goals and priorities. Trustees are unremunerated, and only reimbursed for expenses incurred. The Board consists of 15 members who represent the three "Blocks" of Electronics Watch: public buyers (Block 1), Experts in human rights, labour rights, trade union rights, environmental rights, occupational health & safety, and global supply chains (Block 2), and representatives of free, independent and democratic trade unions as well as other types of independent civil society organisations that represent workers or advocate for worker rights and are located in the regions of production of electronics or other categories of public expenditure (Block 3).

 

Board Nominations Policy

Sanjiv Pandita - Asian Network for the Rights of Occupational and Environmental Victims (ANROEV), Hong Kong - Chair, Block 3

Sanjiv has a long history of engaging on workers' rights issues in the electronics industry. He is a well-known activist and expert in Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health and has won international awards, including from the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, and recognition as one of the 50 most influential Environmental, Health and Safety leaders in 2008. His writings on grassroots workers' movements and workers' health issues have been published widely. He works with grassroots groups across Asia on hazards along the supply chain and the need to organise workers in the industry.  Sanjiv played an important role in the establishment of the Asian Network for the Rights of Occupational and Environmental Victims (ANROEV), a unique grassroots health and safety network in Asia.

Gemma Freedman - UNISON, UK - Secretary, Block 2

Gemma has worked within the international trade union movement for 17 years. Now at UNISON, the UK's largest trade union (1.3 million members delivering public services, including the NHS, local authorities and education) she has responsibility for business and human rights. This includes advocating for binding regulation to ensure that businesses and other organisations take preventative action not to damage people and the planet and supporting public sector organisations to learn how to procure responsibly. Further, she assists UNISON to 'Walk its Talk' within its own operations and supply chains including through its affiliation to Electronics Watch. Previous roles included being responsible for the Trade Union Congress's funding and institutional relationship with the UK Department for International Development, as an independent projects trainer and evaluator and as the Ethical Trading Initiative's trade union caucus coordinator.

Pauline Göthberg - Swedish Regions, Sweden - Block 1

Pauline has over ten years of experience in public administration and is the national coordina­tor for the Swedish Regions work on sustainable public procurement. She has also worked at the OECD as a policy analyst on the project on Leveraging responsible business con­duct through public procurement. She holds a PhD in Business Administration from the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.

Cristian Martin – The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK - Block 1

Cristian joins Electronics Watch with over 20 years' experience in public procurement. His career has included various roles for the NHS, Commonwealth Secretariat, a public procurement consortium and a number of senior procurement roles in the UK higher education sector. He is currently Director of Procurement for the London School of Economics and Political Science. At present he is focused on raising the standard of procurement whilst meeting the ever expanding challenges of responsible procurement in a world that is ever more digital through proper category planning and maximising the use of technology. Cristian is passionate about responsible procurement and the role of public procurement for the betterment of society. He holds an MSc in strategic procurement management and is MCIPS chartered. As a highly experienced public procurement expert, Cristian aims to support the work of electronics watch with converting complex theory and concepts into practical steps for public buyers to follow that is both commercial for their institution and compliant with public procurement rules.

Esty Marcu - University of Sydney, Australia – Block 1

Esty Marcu is the Director of the Modern Slavery Unit at the University of Sydney, Australia, where she is leading the University's strategic response to the Modern Slavery Act and enabling academic excellence on business and human rights. She currently lectures at the University of Sydney Business School on creating shared value, business and human rights, and improving ESG performance. Prior to her role in the higher education sector, Esty spent over 10 years working with both federal and state government departments in Australia on complex public policy issues such as migration policy, refugee settlement, international development, health policy and strategic governance.  Esty is also the Co-founder and Director of the anti-slavery non-profit Project Girl Code, a tech-based organisation providing digital literacy and coding skills to survivors of trafficking and slavery in Cambodia.

Michael McLaughlin - Advanced Procurement for Universities & Colleges, UK - Block 1

Michael McLaughlin has 18 years' experience of working in procurement roles in both the private and public sectors. He spent nine years working in international manufacturing environments, in electronics and then automotive, before moving to the education sector.  He is currently leading the Information Services Procurement Category at APUC, one of the founding members of Electronics Watch. Michael aims to achieve best value when creating framework agreements on behalf of the education sector in Scotland. He is an advocate of collaboration, sustainable supply chains and circular procurement.

Kate Murray - Edinburgh Napier University, UK - Block 1

Kate Murray is currently Head of Procurement at Edinburgh Napier University. She has a decade of public procurement experience in the higher education sector. Since 2017, she has been co-convener for the EAUC Sustainable Procurement Topic Support Network – a network which brings together those in the UK further and higher education sector who have a professional interest in sustainable procurement. She has for several years served as the Scottish institutional representative on the UK Higher Education Procurement Association's Responsible Procurement Group. She holds an MSc in International Development with a focus on international trade and workers' rights in global supply chains. Before pivoting towards public procurement, she spent 5 years at the European Parliament in Brussels as a senior policy advisor to an MEP specialising in international trade and human rights.

Rutvica Andrijasevic - University of Bristol*, UK - Block 2

Rutvica Andrijasevic is an Associate Professor of International Migration and Business at University of Bristol Business School, UK. She has extensive research and advocacy experience in the area of labour rights of migrant workers. Her most recent work focuses on labour rights of migrant workers in electronics supply chains in Central and Eastern Europe, and examines how mobility of capital engenders novel forms of labour mobility as well as associated forms of labour rights violations. In her work and activism, Rutvica pays special attention to migrant women workers whose specific rights often get overlooked and unacknowledged. The aim here is to develop tools –such as this website for pregnant migrant workers in the Czech Republic--  to empower women with respect to their employment, immigration and social rights. Rutvica's work has wide international reach and her writings have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Italian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Croatian and Mandarin. Thanks to her extremely topical and impact-oriented research, Rutvica has advised and provided evidence to international stakeholders including the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, Amnesty International, the Home Office and Human Rights Watch.

Anibel Ferus-Comelo, University of California*, United States - Block 2

Anibel Ferus-Comelo directs the community-engaged Labor Studies program at the University of California, Berkeley (USA). She teaches courses that focus on work, employment and labour jointly offered through the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Center for Labor Research and Education. The multi-organizational collaborative initiatives that she develops prioritize race, class, caste, and gender equity through collective organizing and public policy. Having lived and worked in three continents, she brings a multilingual, transnational analytical lens to her scholarship on supply chains, migration and development. She has authored numerous scholarly articles and book chapters, and is an experienced educator, trainer and facilitator.

David Foust – Independent labour rights expert, Mexico - Block 2

Former Coordinator of CEREAL, a centre dedicated to promote and defend worker rights in the electronic industry in Mexico. He was also CEREAL's international liaison and, before that, he was a volunteer for the Centre, helping with workshops with workers, translations and public relations. He was a member of Good Electronics' steering committee for three years. David has a PhD in Sociology, he is a professor and researcher at ITESO, a university settled in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Daisy Arago - Center for Trade Union & Human Rights (CTUHR), Philippines - Block 3

Daisy is an activist and a labour and human rights defender, has supported electronics worker organising and built civil society coalitions in the Philippines for many years. A Political Science graduate, she is a researcher and trainer and has been executive director of the Center for Trade Union and Human Rights for 16 years. She runs training programmes on feminist participatory action research for the labour and climate justice program of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), and is also a member of the Asia Monitor Resource Centre Regional Council.  Daisy has been involved in the International Solidarity Mission on Mining, the Electronics Watch risk assessment on the ICT industry in the Philippines, and has organised many labour rights seminars, forums, and conferences.

Rochelle Porras - Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research (EILER), the Philippines - Block 3

Rochelle is a labour rights defender and development worker who has been actively supporting initiatives of electronics workers in the Philippines. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in Broadcast Communication and earned her diploma in Urban and Regional Planning. Rochelle has 15 years of experience in non-profit organizations, including her years with the Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research (EILER), and most recently, as the Regional Coordinator (based in Asia) of the GoodElectronics Network.

Shigeru Tanaka - Pacific Asia Resource Centre (PARC), Japan - Block 3

Shigeru is an activist/researcher who has monitored mining sites in the Philippines and Ecuador both of which are deeply connected to critical minerals for the energy transition. Shigeru conducted his Master's study in City and Regional Planning at Cornell University after graduating from Waseda University. He has over 12 years of experience in Japanese civil society connecting the atrocities taking place in the Global South with consumption behaviors of the Global North.

Joanna Unterschütz - Polish Institute for Human Rights and Business (PIHRB), Poland - Block 3

Joanna has authored publications in the fields of national and European labour law and criminal labour law including human trafficking. Her recent research centres on collective rights of workers in new forms of employment. She has also participated in several international research projects, focused on the protection of fundamental rights and labour law. At the beginning of her professional career, Joanna worked for trade unions. Currently, concentrating on her academic career she is a member of the Transnational Trade Union Rights Experts Network (TTUR), a network of lawyers from various European countries, which focuses on the study of European labour law and social rights. The TTUR network is also an advisory body to the European Trade Union Institute in Brussels. Joanna also co-operates with the Polish Institute for Human Rights and Business as Associated Senior Expert.

Amanda Hawes - Expert on Electronics Industry Accountability for Workplace Toxics, United States - Block 2

Amanda Hawes has been an advocate for safe jobs and healthy families for more than 40 years. Co-founder of SCCOSH (Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health) in 1977, and Past President of the Board of Worksafe (a California based occupational Safety and Health advocacy organization), Amanda's focus has been the health impacts on workers and their offspring caused by chemical exposure in the High tech/electronics manufacturing industry, both in the US and in the many countries to which the industry has expanded. While fighting for health protective exposure standards, effective controls to minimize exposures and long-standing efforts to phase out of reproductive toxicants, she has also held electronics companies accountable in court when their failures to inform and to protect their own workers have caused cancers and other chronic diseases in workers and/or devastating birth defects in their offspring. She has successfully litigated many cases for electronics workers, helping them and their families to recover compensation for their illnesses caused by their work. She is a graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Law School.

*for identification purposes only