Jane Mosbacher Morris On Ethical Supply Chains Supporting Growth Internationally

Jane Mosbacher Morris is Founder and CEO of TO THE MARKET, a company that connects businesses and consumers to ethically and sustainably made products from around the world.

Jane previously served as the Director of Humanitarian Action for the McCain Institute for International Leadership and currently serves on the Institute's Human Trafficking Advisory Council. Prior to joining the Institute, she worked in the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Counterterrorism and in the Secretary's Office of Global Women's Issues. She is the author of Buy the Change You Want to See: Use Your Purchasing Power to Make the World a Better Place, which became a Target Non-Fiction Best-Seller, a #1 Consumer Guide on Amazon, and a #1 New Business Ethics Release on Amazon. In 2020, Fortune Magazine named Jane one of the 25 World’s Greatest Leaders due to her response to COVID-19.

Jane discusses the importance of ethically sourcing materials and how to increase transparency within supply chains internationally.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Indio Myles] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led to your work in social enterprise?

[Jane Mosbacher Morris] - I started my career working for the US Department of State. This is our foreign office, and I was focused on national security. My expertise within national security were focused on women, addressing things like conflict resolution, peace building, et cetera.

I really came away with the conclusion that for overlooked and underestimated populations to have more power, they really needed more access to resources. It was a simple but profound mental shift for me.

I stayed working at the State Department but began an MBA at Columbia University in New York. I started studying developing world economies. When I was studying, I discovered retail manufacturing, which is not necessarily an industry that would come top of mind when thinking about major economies in the developing world. Most of us rightfully think of the agriculture sector, because it is the largest. But what I found was that retail manufacturing is one of the largest economies in the developing world, and it's an economy that is dominated by women in the workforce. Over 80% of garment workers are women, and this made it clear to me that if I was to get involved in this industry with the intent of trying to drive change (i.e., engaging in retail manufacturing to support suppliers providing safe and dignified work as well as sustainable operations) I would have an outsised impact on women in the developing world. That was the roundabout way in which I started my business TO THE MARKET, and our vision is to change retail manufacturing to empower people and protect the planet.

As the CEO and Founder of TO THE MARKET, can you share what are the organisation's core activities to create this social impact and change?

TO THE MARKET focuses on helping mostly U.S. based brands, retailers and corporations, but we also have clients all over the world. We welcome anyone who has purchasing power (which is all of us), but we really help these organisations focus on doing more sourcing and manufacturing from ethical and sustainable suppliers. For example, if I'm a big retailer in the U.S. doing a lot of production, but a lot of that production is being done in factories where I am struggling to decrease its environmental and social footprint, TO THE MARKET comes in and we help you actually start producing the same goods with the same amount of quality (if not better quality) at a similar price, but as an ethical and sustainable supplier. We're really shifting where Global North purchase orders are going to make sure they're going to suppliers treating people and the planet with the same respect as their business’ performance.

Why is ethically sourcing materials and supply chain transparency important for businesses to consider while operating?

It's such a great question, because I think a lot of the movement recently around conscious consumerism has been focused on sustainable products, which are critical. There is no doubt that choosing more sustainable fabrications and materials are absolutely a step forward. But what I'm seeing a lot of times happen is a sustainable or organic product is being made in a factory that has really poor environmental practices. The actual production facility is then also treating people poorly. It's not enough to just have a sustainable or organic product, we really need to look at the actual footprint of the facility to understand if it is operating in an ethical and sustainable way. Why does that matter? It matters because, first of all, as individual consumers, we seek products that align with our values. I think there are very few of us that feel it's worth accessing a cheap shirt if we know that cheap shirt involved someone being in a painful work environment. That is not a trade-off most of us (presented with the information) would ever make. From a core values and human dignity standpoint, we need to remind ourselves that the vast majority of products we're wearing right now, that are sitting on our desk or in our house are made with human hands. Yes, with machines helping, but mostly with human hands. We have to ask ourselves if we are helping or hurting this cycle of empowering, enabling or participating in a more destructive and exploitative dynamic. The second piece is in regard to businesses. Businesses are espousing their values publicly, and typically, they are very positive values they espouse. If they are espousing these public values, and then their supply chain and core operations are not reflective of these values, it's a huge risk to the business. It's a huge operational risk, for example perhaps it's a risky facility because they haven't done the diligence to actually understand their supply chain. But it's also a real risk to reputation, whether they are operating in the way that they are speaking.

What role does sustainable business practices play in maintaining positive connections between nations?

One of the statistics that I always am surprised by is that after World War II, around 70-80% of money going overseas was from the government. For example, this could be a government investing into another country via the public sector. 20% was private, i.e. I am Jane, I have family back in Germany, and I am sending over money or investing in my cousin Carl's business. This is just an example. The numbers now have flipped; 70-80% of money that goes from a nation overseas into another country is from the private sector, not from the public sector.

If we are ever going to make progress in addressing some of these societal challenges that we have made progress on but have much room for improvement, the private sector has to be leading the way, because they are the majority of the dollars involved in the industry.

A very quick anecdote I often share is that one of the things I did was worked on human trafficking and labour exploitation. That was one of the portfolios I had over the course of my career prior to starting TO THE MARKET as an entrepreneur. I was astounded to find the amount of public sector money (it could be from a foundation or government that went into fighting labour trafficking and labour exploitation) was literally a fraction, a tiny fraction. I would say less than 10% of the amount of money that sent to suppliers to actually produce products. It's much more powerful to leverage the private sector and encourage them to clean up their supply chain, make sure they're involved and not continuing to exploit workers than to solely try to attack it via the public sector. This is especially when the funding available in the public sector is such a small part of what is available to address the challenge.

I share this because the private sector has to be involved if we're ever going to drive serious societal change. There has to be incentives for businesses be a part of making improvements on the social and environmental footprints of their work.

Where are there opportunities for social entrepreneurs and impact led individuals to access ethical supply chains and create more sustainable and positive goods and services?

I'll answer that question from a consumer and an entrepreneurial perspective. As individuals, we have much more control over discretionary spending, and less when we give away to non-profits. If I'm interested in women's empowerment, I should really be thinking about using more of my discretionary spend to buy from women owned businesses. I likely have a factor of X dollars of what I'm spending on this discretionary bucket then if I’m donating to a women's empowerment organisation. One of the things I say is for us to first as individuals identify a category, we have discretionary spend in, and it could be tiny. It could be the coffee I have in my house or the chocolate I buy for myself as a treat, but you can then identify a value important to you. Mine could be women's empowerment, yours could be supporting small business.

Everyone can have different values, and that's the beauty of it; it's not just one political viewpoint and it's not just for one price point. Anyone who has a category that they spend money on, which is almost all of us with some level of discretionary spending.

Of course, some of us have more than others, I recognise that. But we can make a commitment to align to values that we care about; small business, veterans, people of colour, women with a discretionary spending category and say, "I’m going to commit to spending 50% of the gifts I buy for the holidays with women owned businesses, because that's the value I'm trying to advance in my work." As professionals, we can do that too. We can begin to ask more questions from our suppliers. We can try to better understand their certifications that help reflect the strength of their environmental or social footprint. If the answer is no, then I often encourage people to have their facility audited. If you're buying a product from a facility that says your name on it, you want to know who's touching your product and brand. Certainly, this is something that TO THE MARKET helps our clients do, but you can ask those questions of your suppliers and say, "help me validate the claims you're making around your social and environmental footprint." It's only through using these market forces that the demand for more ethical and sustainable production and supply will continue to catch up and change the stakes around what's acceptable behaviour.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently that are creating a positive social change?

I get really excited when I see alignment around job creation and the sale of any type of good. What I mean by that is I always get excited when social impact is focused on something sustainable, such as jobs rather than simply a give back. This is not a knock on give backs, i.e. I sell socks for $2 and donate 30 cents to an at risk population. I think that's awesome; but what would be even cooler is if you employed the at risk population to make the socks.

Any company going out of their way to actually provide employment opportunities and production of a good, allowing for a sustainable income of a population, are businesses I get really excited about.

I would certainly say if people were thinking about how they can be a part of that or what they can look for, I would encourage them to look for brands employing at risk, marginalised or overlooked populations and ways in which you can support them. I think that movement is really cool and a step beyond, "I make it in this factory over here and then donate it to this population over there." I look for any brand or company, this could be coffee, chocolate, groceries, home goods, you name it, going out of their way to provide sustainable employment opportunities.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend our listeners to check out?

There are all sorts of recommendations I have for books I think are interesting or helping create positive change. Of course, I will plug my book, Buy The Change You Want To See. It's available online and through various outlets still. It is really focused on just a handful of categories I was able to tackle within the book, but it talks about ways in which we as corporates and people in the corporate world can harness our purchasing power for good. How can we as individuals really learn more about the choices that we're making around basics like coffee and chocolate? The book has digestible insights, and anyone beginning their conscious consumerism journey can take away things that are practical because it's so important to look for practical, pragmatic habits we can maintain. I think that's really critical. Outside of that, one book I'm really interested in at the moment that came out recently is more focused on women's empowerment. It’s super fascinating and called The Only Woman. It's a hard back book, and it has images of very famous moments over time where there is only a single woman in the photograph. For example, there will be a famous World War II gathering of leaders, and then one woman in the photo. The book dissects the woman, why she is in the photo, what's her background and role behind the scenes. It sounds like a silly premise, but I think what the book is sharing is that behind the scenes, men and women were participating in all of these important inflection points throughout the course of history. Oftentimes just men were photographed to capture that moment, but behind the scenes, both men and women were participating. I'm just finding the book so fascinating, learning about these people who were probably quite instrumental in influencing the direction of certain major conversations or events, but really never got airtime and are only now beginning to get a little bit of coverage on their impact.