Paul Rice

Paul Rice is the Founder & CEO of Fair Trade USA, the leading third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in North America. Since launching Fair Trade USA (formally called TransFair) in 1998, Rice has brought Fair Trade into the mainstream and built a movement to expand its impact. He has challenged and collaborated with hundreds of companies to rework their global supply chains to obtain high-quality products that support community development and environmental protection.

His work as a social entrepreneur has helped over 1 million farming and producing families to receive a fair price for their crops and to compete in the global marketplace through direct, long-term contracts with international buyers. With thousands of certified products found in 200,000 retail locations today, Fair Trade USA's Fair Trade Certified label is considered to be the leading mark of sustainability and responsible sourcing in North America.

Rice has been criticized in recent years for his decision to resign Fair Trade USA's membership from Fairtrade Labeling Organization (FLO), the international fair trade labeling organization. While he argues that the split was necessary for expansion, some critics worry that scaling Fair Trade will dilute its impact. Rice is committed to expanding Fair Trade to impoverished laborers, whether or not they work on a cooperative through his “Fair Trade for All” platform.

Early life and education Rice was raised in Dallas and Austin, Texas, the son of a single mother. He graduated from St. Mark's School of Texas.

He was an entrepreneurial boy, selling newspapers, mowing lawns, and gardening in his community. By saving his earnings, Rice was able to self-finance most of his college tuition at Yale University, where he enrolled in 1978.

At Yale, Rice studied Political Science and Economics, which sparked an interest in the issues of global hunger, poverty, and underdevelopment, particularly as they related to rural farming. At nineteen, he took a year off from school and went to China to learn about land reform and the peasants' struggle to organize cooperatives. This experience cemented his decision to enter the field of international development after graduating in 1983. In 1990 Paul founded PRODECOOP, which became one of the largest organic coffee exporters in the world. After training the next CEO, Paul returned to the states in 1994, to earn a Master's of Business Administration at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. During his time there he developed the Business plan for TransFair or otherwise today known as Fair Trade USA. As it turned out, Nicaragua became home to Rice for 11 years. There, he became a specialist in rural economic and cooperative development. Traveling throughout the country, he helped hundreds of smallholder farmers organize cooperatives. Through the cooperative, these farmers got direct access to the global market and received higher compensation for their work. The additional income enabled them to improve the quality of life in their entire community.

After veing CEO of PRODECOOP for four years, Rice transitioned leadership to a native woman who was the first female to lead a coffee company in the male-dominated Nicaraguan coffee industry.

Subsequently, Rice was strategy consultant and development advisor to 22 cooperative enterprises throughout Latin America and Asia, helping them become more competitive, democratic, and self-reliant. His years of first-hand experience abroad in the areas of global supply chain transparency, social auditing, sustainable agriculture, and cooperative enterprise development led him to found Fair Trade USA.

Fair Trade USA After 11 years working with cooperatives, Rice returned to the US to expand the market for Fair Trade goods. The products would be certified as Fair Trade by his start-up, Fair Trade USA. Rice opened the first "national headquarters”—a one-room office in a converted warehouse in downtown Oakland—in late 1998.

In 2011, Rice came under fire for his decision to resign Fair Trade USA's membership from the Fair Trade Labeling Organization (FLO), the international fair trade labeling organization. In 2005, he received the prestigious Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. He was a Finalist for Entrepreneur Magazine's Entrepreneur of 2012. Ethical Corporation's 2019 Business Leader of the Year. Berkeley Haas 2019 Leading Through Innovation Award.

Speaking Rice has become a distinguished speaker and leader in economic development, social enterprise, and corporate responsibility. Some of his engagements include: Since 2004, he has spoken on Fair Trade at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In 2009, spoke about his new commitment to Rwandan coffee farmers at the Clinton Global Initiative. In 2011, he delivered a TED-x speech on the conscious consumption movement at the Ashoka U Exchange at Duke. In 2012, he spoke The African Network conference on seizing entrepreneurial opportunities in San Jose, California. In 2018, he delivered UC Berkeley's Haas MBA Commencement Speech.