Biographies
FLO Chair of the Board: Barbara Fiorito
Since May 2006, Barbara Fiorito has been chairing the Board of Directors of Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO). Previously, Barbara served on Oxfam America’s Board from 1992 and as Chair of the Board as well as Deputy Chair of Oxfam International from 2000-2005. Her work and vision helped transform Oxfam America from a small, grants-based NGO into an influential campaigning and advocacy organization with global outreach.
Besides her experience in the work of non-governmental organizations, Barbara Fiorito also held executive positions between 1964 and 1992 in the private sector, financial services and securities management firms respectively. She had a long career at the Chemical Banking Corporation (now JP Morgan Chase Banking), holding senior posts in the Trust & Investment Bank and Metropolitan Banking Division. During this time, she founded the innovative "Not-for-Profit Group", which specialized in academic, healthcare, religious, arts and cultural institutions, foundations as well as civic and social service institutions, and unions. In the 1970s she developed a “Streetbanker” program which was used as a model by financial institutions seeking to stimulate small business opportunities in underdeveloped urban areas.
On leave from Chemical Bank from 1968 to 1970, she served in the US Peace Corps in Manila as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of Labor for Manpower Development. She has also travelled extensively to developing countries in recent years, including Mozambique, South Africa, Mexico, Ethiopia, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Bangladesh.
Barbara Fiorito is the first FLO Board Chair who is not an executive of a national Labelling Initiative or affiliated with a Fairtrade-labelling core stakeholder group. Barbara’s vision, as that of FLO, is to ensure that all core stakeholder groups: producers, Labelling Initiatives, and traders, as well as civil society, will be active and influential voices in the important decisions that FLO faces in the future.
More information on the Members of the Board of Directors can be found
in the section FLO's structure.