Welcome to the SLCP Signatory Newsflash!
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Thursday 25 July 2024
This is a special edition of the SLCP newsflash to provide you with an update on SLCP’s governance and management since becoming an independent non-profit foundation as of February 2024.
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Message from Janet Mensink, CEO:
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 It has now been six months since SLCP officially separated from our incubator, Cascale, formerly the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), and became an independent non-profit foundation registered in the Netherlands (known as a “stichting”). It feels like good timing to update you on some of the exciting changes that we have implemented in the past half year. Below we share details of our new two-tier Board that has replaced our former Council. We spotlight the two Board Chairs, Anna Burger and Michael Cai, whose support to the Secretariat is proving invaluable as we implement the 2024-2028 Strategic Plan. To ensure the resilience of our growing organization, we have also been expanding our executive team, and I am delighted to announce the appointment of Steve Harris as our new Chief Operating Officer. We have also expanded our Senior Management Team to six people. You can read more about our team here.
As our former Independent Chair, Jonathan Obermeister, transitions into a new advisory role, I would like to thank him wholeheartedly for his three years of leadership. I look forward to continuing to work together closely. Finally, the biggest thank you of all must go to you, our signatories, for your ongoing support to SLCP. I hope to connect with many of you in the second half of the year. For now, read on to find out more about our updated governance and management model.
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SLCP Supervisory Board and SLCP Management Board
The SLCP Board remains signatory-led, with 9 signatory caucus seats and 3 independent expert seats. There is also now a new category for strategic partners, with one seat already assigned to Cascale, to cement our new strategic partnership post SLCP’s independence. SLCP now has a small Management Board who are directly responsible for supporting and supervising the work of SLCP’s leadership team. The Supervisory Board is larger and oversees the work of the Management Board. To maintain the well-established consensual multi-stakeholder approach that has always been so important to SLCP’s governance, the Boards meet together quarterly to align on key questions, proposals and votes. Full details of the Board members can be found on our website.
Several Board seats will be up for election this year, and we strongly encourage signatories to put themselves forward as candidates – more information will be coming in September, so watch this space!
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Chair of the Management Board – Anna Burger
Once described by Fortune Magazine as “the most powerful woman in the labor movement”, Anna brings decades of experience at the forefront of employee organizations and as a government adviser to SLCP. Currently President of the Board at the ILR School’s Global Labor Institute at Cornell University, Anna has been actively involved in SLCP since its inception and sat on the SLCP Council in an expert seat from 2019-2023. In her new role as Chair of the Management Board, Anna is more closely involved with SLCP’s work than ever, with the Board managing the Foundation strategically, operationally and financially.
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Chair of the Supervisory Board – Michael Cai
Currently the Director of Operations & Supply Chain at Décor (Suzhou) Co. Limited, managing a global supply chain, Michael is a veteran in the textile and garment industry with extensive experience including in responsible sourcing and sustainability. Michael was an enthusiastic and committed member of the SLCP Council from 2021-2023, occupying one of the Manufacturer seats, and is now proud to chair the work of the Supervisory Board.
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Creation of new COO position in SLCP Executive Team
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Futureproofing SLCP and ensuring it remains fit for purpose is a key priority for the Management Board. While SLCP intends to remain a lean and mean organization, our growing operations will require an expansion of the team and the first step is to create more capacity at the strategic level. Steve Harris has therefore taken up the position of Chief Operating Officer (COO). With over 30 years’ experience in technology, operations and leadership, Steve occupied an expert seat on the SLCP Council from 2019 to 2023 and has been working in an interim and part-time capacity in various roles at SLCP in the last few years, including most recently as Chief Technology Officer and Chief Financial Officer. With Steve’s unrivalled knowledge and understanding of SLCP, he is a perfect fit to support Janet in establishing the new processes and systems required now that SLCP is an independent non-profit foundation.
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I'm really excited to have this opportunity to help SLCP continue on its journey and growth. With the strong foundations laid down over the past 7 years, I look forward to working with Janet, the board and the wider team to establish SLCP as the preferred source of credible and actionable social and labor data, not only in the apparel, garment and footwear sector but also beyond.
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Governance and Strategy Advisor – Jonathan Obermeister
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 With the implementation of SLCP’s new two-tier board system, and in line with the rules governing non-profit organizations in the Netherlands, the role of independent Chair of the SLCP Council has been dissolved, and Jonathan has transitioned into a new role as Governance & Strategy Advisor. We asked Jonathan to share his reflections on his three years as SLCP’s Independent Chair:
What are you most proud of?
Having been an external consultant on the development of SLCP’s first strategic plan, it was very rewarding to then be closely involved in its implementation. It has been particularly impressive to see how SLCP has built the multi-stakeholder consensus and support needed in order to deliver and implement the CAF, and how SLCP has succeeded in establishing itself as the leading voice on the convergence of social audits. Overall though I am most proud of helping to steer SLCP to independence. When I took over as Council Chair, I told the Council that I wanted to make it my personal mission to see SLCP become fully independent when the time was right and preferably at the start of our next five-year strategy cycle. And thanks to the incredible planning and preparation work by the SLCP team, key Council members and our friends at Cascale - as well as the support of our signatories and partners – we got it over the line earlier this year.
How confident are you in SLCP's future as an independent organization?
In a word, very. Everyone who was involved in preparing for independence needed to be confident that SLCP had a robust, scalable business model; that we would be self-financing and self-sustaining; that we had clear proof of concept and critical mass in terms of industry adoption; and that we could take our signatories and partners along with us on the journey. Also, as a not-for-profit public benefit foundation, the new SLCP Board has a new set of formal responsibilities which we didn't have as a Council - so it's also taken a lot of planning work to prepare our Board for the new regime and to ensure we continue to have the highest standards of governance. Having seen the new SLCP Board and Secretariat in operation over the past few months, I can tell you that SLCP is in very good shape indeed.
How do you see your new role with SLCP going forward?
Kudos to Anna and Michael, who are doing a great job in their new formal roles as SLCP’s Board Chairs – which has also made it very easy to transition to my new advisory role. I will continue to support the combined SLCP Board and the CEO in a number of ways – including governance and strategy advice, supporting Board Committees and continuing to facilitate major Board meetings. SLCP and I have already travelled a long way together and I am absolutely delighted to have this fresh opportunity to continue to serve SLCP into the future.
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➡️ For practical information on using the SLCP Converged Assessment Framework (CAF), please go to the SLCP Gateway.
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