The second annual Fletcher Women’s Leadership Awardwill be presented on March 6 to Amanda Judge (F ’09),the founder of Faire Collection, a New York-based fair trade jewelry company.
Leslie Puth (F ’11), the chair of the Fletcher Women’s Leadership Award committee, explained that the committee chose Judge because of her ability to combine her entrepreneurial spirit with her passion for social issues.
“[She has an] awareness of social issues and a desire to address those in some meaningful way, coupled with a very admirable business acumen,” Puth said.
Judge originally came up with the idea for her company during her time as a Fletcher School student, when she traveled to Ecuador on several occasionsto study poverty reduction strategies, including microfinance. Her research primarily focused on the financial difficulties experienced by Ecuador’s artisans.
“I realized that in a lot of cases that the artisan work that women were doing was [resulting in them] barely breaking even or actually taking income away because it was really expensive,” Judge said. “They were making something like 10 cents an hour because they didn’t understand the cost structure.”
Judge attributed most of the financial problems the women faced to their lack of education.
“The majority of [the] women did not finish elementary school, let alone high school,” she said. “Most of them were literate, so they could read, but they weren’t literate in business skills.”
Seeking to help the artisans improve the financial viability of their businesses, Judge founded Faire Collection, a business that combines social entrepreneurship and fair trade jewelry.
“[It was an idea] that would help these women figure out their own businesses and harness the world’s market to their advantage,” she said.
According to Judge, Faire Collection now works with artists in both Ecuador and Vietnam. Rather than simply selling jewelry, the company has developed programs to improve the artisans' business acumen.
“Right now in Ecuador we’re working on new programs and have opened up a fair trade workshop,” she said. “In addition to working directly with artisans and helping them build up their own small businesses, we began our own workshop as a model for how you can adhere to local laws and hire new employees.
Judge explained that many artisans struggle to transition out of the informal economy in which they work, which led her to create the workshop.
"How can we help them navigate to move their business into the formal economy?" she said. "We found that it’s a really difficult transition for them to make. If we created our own workshop, we could demystify that entire process.”
According to Puth, Judge embodies what the Fletcher School hopes its students bring and takeaway from their education.
“She saw the need through her work in microfinance in Latin America, and she was able to bring back more money to the communities in a meaningful way,” Puth said. “She coupled that with a really brave initiative to start a business in a very difficult field.”
Judge will be honored at a 3 p.m. ceremony in the Cabot ASEAN Auditorium on Friday, March 6. According to the Fletcher Schoolwebsite, the ceremony is timed to coincide with International Women’s Day, which will be celebrated worldwide on Sunday, March 8.
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