Ayesha is a social entrepreneur with a passion for building sustainable supply chains that respect people and our planet. With over 15 years of leadership in promoting social justice and sustainability within the fashion industry, she founded Remake to mobilize citizens to demand a more just, transparent, and accountable fashion industry. Remake’s free educational resources, advocacy campaigns, and sustainable brands directory are focused on making fashion a force for good.
Ayesha has worked across the public, private, and civil society sectors to promote the rights and dignity of the women who make our clothes. Prior to founding Remake, she led brand engagement at Better Work, a World Bank and United Nations partnership, to ensure safe and decent working conditions in garment factories around the world. Prior to this, she ran the fashion vertical at BSR, providing strategic advice to brands including Levi Strauss and Company, Marks and Spencer, Nike, and the Gucci Group on the design and integration of sustainability into business. She has a master’s degree in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley.
She counts both Karachi and San Francisco as her homes, and she is happiest when spending time with the women who bring our fashion to life and amplifying the stories of fashion’s most essential workers.
Maxine Bédat
Maxine is the founder and director of New Standard Institute, a think and do tank using data to drive accountability in industry. She is also the author of the book, UNRAVELED: The Life and Death of a Garment, a Financial Times Book of the Year and translated into several languages. Prior to NSI, Maxine co-founded and was the CEO of Zady, a fashion brand and lifestyle destination creating a transparent and sustainable future for the apparel industry. Bédat has been recognized by Fast Company in its Most Creative in Business, Business of Fashion’s BoF 500, the definitive index of people shaping the global fashion industry, and Oprah’s Super Soul 100, for leaders elevating humanity. Bédat began her career in international law working at the Rwandan Criminal Tribunal and Allen & Overy, and received a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School.
Sheela Ahluwalia
Sheela Ahluwalia is the Director of Policy and Advocacy at Transparentem. In this capacity, she leads efforts to pursue accountability and achieve systems change, related to human rights and environmental abuses in supply chains. She previously served as Director of Labor Investigations and Senior Labor Analyst.
Prior to joining Transparentem, Sheela served at the US Department of State for nearly a decade, where she helped develop and implement policy across Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. In the Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, she advised senior-level US officials and foreign counterparts on policies and programs, produced country assessments for the annual Trafficking in Persons Report, and exposed previously hidden forms of forced labor. She also negotiated human rights resolutions in the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council, and managed almost $10 million in foreign assistance to promote justice in West Africa. Previously, Sheela worked for the World Bank, the US Department of Labor, human trafficking NGOs in India and the United States, and an indigenous rights organization in Ecuador. She has been part of the antitrafficking movement since 2002, when she began volunteering for a community group in Washington, DC.
Sheela earned an M.A. from The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a B.A. from Tufts University.
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“In a moment of regulatory flux and rising trade protectionism, companies must not lose sight of their responsibility and obligation to protect the workers who power global supply chains. Preventing labor exploitation isn’t a “nice-to-have” — it is necessary for conducting business responsibly and in accordance with the law.”