This workshop features brands that leverage their business as a force for good in the broader community – whether localized efforts, national or global systems change. Workshop facilitators will briefly introduce an initiative their company recently pursued to support social and/or environmental change – sharing campaign structure, function, partners, and outcomes. After inspiring creative ideas from the facilitators’ shared campaign experiences, workshop attendees will have the opportunity to envision their own campaigns geared toward galvanizing social or environmental change.

BIOS:

Nancy Metcalf – As Dr. Bronner’s Marketing Campaign Manager, Nancy Metcalf has worked on many public education, sales and marketing, and political campaigns to advance hemp, regenerative organic agriculture, social equity, the environment and other issues.

Entering the Natural Products Industry in 2008, Nancy has a background in marketing, communications, project management, community organizing, public speaking, wellness, natural living, and the sciences. She has worked on many public education, sales and marketing, and political campaigns, including: Hemp History Week, World Fair Trade Day, Right to Know (Label GMOs), Fair Pay Today, Heal Earth (Regenerative Organic Agriculture), Co-operative Business Education, and Community Bill of Rights (CELDF model).

Danielle Robidoux – Danielle has been an Organizer at Equal Exchange for about 5 years with a Masters in International Relations and Economic Development at UMass Boston. A long-time mover and shaker always aiming to challenge the status quo she manages a group of 4,000 food activists in the US as part of Equal Exchange’s alternative network of consumers. Danielle has been one of the main organizers of Equal Exchange’s yearly Summits bringing together producer partners internationally, citizen-consumers, and the worker-owners of Equal Exchange to sit around one table and grapple with issues plaguing our food system and how they can make it better.

Felipe Gonzales – Data-Driven Director of Marketing at LifeSource Natural Foods in Salem, OR, Felipe brings years of experience building and managing complex marketing campaigns. He’s passionate about sustainability and building a socially-responsible business, that’s focused on improving the lives of everyone in their community. A project manager with skills in several disciplines including Facebook/Google Ads, email automation, Google Analytics, data analysis, conversion tracking implementation, A/B testing software, Felipe is passionate about a ton of other amazing marketing tools he can’t help but play with.

Bená Burda (pronounced like Renee, only with a ‘B’) – After beginning her career working with small scale farmers as a pioneer in the organic foods industry, Bená Burda co-founded Maggie’s Organics, the country’s oldest existing organic apparel brand in 1992 to “save acres of cotton from the ravages of chemical cultivation”. By 1999, after realizing that environmental sustainability cannot exist without social responsibility, she began creating worker-owned cooperatives and developing transparent independent supply chains to manufacture Maggie’s apparel.  In addition to the many awards and accolades received by Maggie’s, Burda herself has received the prestigious “Special Pioneer Award” from the Organic Industry, and was voted one of the “25 people who most influenced the Organics Industry.”