Profiles

Henrietta Lake has been at the forefront of teams working to improve labour practices in global supply chains since 2000. She has worked in more than 20 countries and developed her expertise through programmes in factories and on farms in China, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Thailand and West Africa that are regarded as pioneering in her field. With a focus on building supplier capabilities to identify and address their own challenges, often through improved worker engagement and the intelligent use of data, Henrietta has led efforts that link improvements in labour rights to business profitability.

Henrietta has led the ethical trade function for some of the biggest clothing and footwear brands and retailers, most recently for Sainsbury’s, where she is also leading the Group’s response to the Modern Slavery Act. Her work ranges from strategic consulting and organisational change, to innovations in the ‘beyond compliance’ space, such as enabling disruptive technologies in the workplace and implementing worker performance incentive schemes. She has led Sainsbury’s engagement with investors on supply chain working practices, which has included workshops and a recent field trip with investors to visit suppliers. She also serves as an advisor to the investor driven Workforce Disclosure Initiative (WDI), run by ShareAction, which helps institutional investors benchmark companies’ performance on the management of workforce risks and opportunities in their own businesses and supply chains.

Henrietta graduated from Oxford University and obtained her PhD in political science from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in the USA. Her doctoral research examined the business benefits of improved working conditions, focusing on how advanced human resource management (HRM) systems and work organisation impact factory productivity. Previously, Henrietta was a financial journalist at The Mail on Sunday and then The Times.