Social Impact Squad

Hubert Chen

Job Title: Ethical Sourcing Manager, China & Indonesia

Tell us about your role at Twinings and what you do.I am working on mapping out Twinings tea supply chain to the source of origin, evaluating ethical sourcing performance in the supply chain and I support producers on continuous improvements in term of ethical standards.

Tell us a typical day in the life of your role. Aha, an exciting typical high-5-K day during Twinings community needs assessment: Walk around tea community, talk to people living there, look into documents, take pictures and drink tea produced in the community.

What do you love about your job? Travelling around the world to experience diverse tea, people and landscapes.

What made you choose your career? I believe tea and herbs scented with ethics will provide our consumers with more pleasure, for both taste on palate and conscience in heart.

What do you think are the best skills that you bring to your job? Inspiring, prioritize needs, number savvy.

Name three words that best describe you. Considerate, detailed, exploring new areas.

How do you think your colleagues would describe you? Moderate, humble, meticulous.

What’s your favourite country you’ve visited? UK

What’s your favourite tea? My most favourite tea is White tea for its delicate taste and nature elements it holds thanks for its most naturally simple drying process.

What’s your favourite herb? My favourite herb is Liquorice for its medical function. 

Sweekriti Pradhan

Job Title: Ethical Sourcing Executive, India and Sri Lanka

Tell us about your role at Twinings and what you do. I engage with communities in tea gardens we source from in India and Sri Lanka, assess their working and living conditions to identify their needs and priorities.

Tell us a typical day in the life of your role. Conducting TCNA (Twinings Community Needs Assessment) in a supplier's tea estate, interacting with workers at the field, factory, their homes, visiting the local communities - all of these with several cups offreshly brewed tea!

What do you love about your job? Travelling to new regions and having the opportunity to understand social structure of diverse communities. I like the fact that as an organization, we are very much ethically driven. Being a part of the Social Impact team and delivering all that I can as a part of our combined efforts makes me feel good about myself. I love that.

What made you choose your career? My past experiences were apt to my current role in Twinings. That, coupled with a great work culture and a diverse team made me choose this career.

What do you think are the best skills that you bring to your job? I bring to my job good communication skills, sensitivity to others' needs and strong people orientation.

Name three words that you describe you. Enthusiastic, Sociable and Self-Confident.

How do you think your colleagues would describe you? Sunshine!

What’s your favourite country you’ve visited? China (Yunnan Province).

What’s your favourite tea? DarjeelingTea of course, it's home!

What’s your favourite herb? Turmeric. It has so many benefits (in cooking, as a medicine, as a face pack etc.).

Gabriella Wass

Job Title: Social Impact Manager - Human Rights Specialist

Tell us about your role at Twinings and what you do. I wear three hats in my role: I lead our ethical herbs agenda; I coordinate our factory monitoring and improvement programme; and I'm our in-house human rights specialist. Our herbs work is really exciting. I work closely with our buying team to get ever more transparency in our herb supply chains, and to understand the needs of the communities we source from, so that we can make a positive impact on the ground. In our factory supply base, together with Priscilla, our Ethical Sourcing Executive in China, we monitor and improve conditions in the factories where our packaging is printed, our herbs are processed etc. We also work closely with our Procurement teams to help them fully understand and implement our ethical standards. Finally, I look at all the things we do as a business and ask myself "how can we make sure that we operate in a way that respects human rights?"

How long have you worked at Twinings? I joined in 2017.

Tell us a typical day in the life of your role. I often start the day catching up with my colleague Priscilla, our Ethical Sourcing Executive in China, who will be reaching the end of her working day over in Shanghai. We review factory audit reports together and discuss where we need to work with our suppliers to implement improvements. I'll then usually turn my focus to herbs. I might catch up with a buying colleague, look into a specific supply chain, discuss a new herb with a supplier, or work on planning a trip to conduct a Twinings Community Needs Assessment in a growing location. Finally, I'll try to find some quiet time to think about a bigger picture issue, be it training we want to run, a long-term human rights strategy that needs some attention, or a "how can we change this?" question I've been mulling over in my head.

What do you love about your job? I feel empowered to do the right thing. Experience has showed me that our leadership will have my back if we need to make a difficult commercial decision. I also love the creativity of my role, my experienced, knowledgeable colleagues, and trips to visit herb growers in our supply chain. There's nothing quite like stomping through a field of camomile in the sunshine!

What made you choose your career? My background is human rights. I worked for non-profits for 5 years, before deciding I wanted to see if I could play a positive role within business. While doing that I got to visit a lot of farms in East Africa. Working in human rights in agricultural supply chains was my dream.

What do you think are the best skills that you bring to your job? I'm good at building relationships, rapport and trust, be it with colleagues in commercial roles or with our suppliers. I'm precise and like getting to the bottom of things. And I feel responsible for the welfare of people in our supply chain, which pushes me to be pretty determined.

Name three words that best describe you. Honest, strong-willed, open.

How do you think your colleagues would describe you? Caring, hard-working, precise.

What’s your favourite country you’ve visited? India - I used to work at a human rights law firm in Delhi and got the chance to travel the length of the country by train. Absolutely stunning.

What’s your favourite tea? Twinings English Afternoon.

What’s your favourite herb? Linden with some citrus or honey. 

Hernán Zunino

Job Title: Social Impact Manager, Latin America.

Tell us about your role at Twinings and what you do. My role is to understand the multiple tea and other herbs supply chains we source from in Latin America, focusing on the social conditions and needs of the communities to then work jointly with providers and other relevant institutions to create a genuine positive impact. 

Tell us a typical day in the life of your role. Probably a typical month would better describe my role: I spend about half the time engaging with our providers and the communities that make that production possible, visiting and interviewing them through our most important tool the TCNA, which forms a comprehensive analysis of the social conditions on the ground. With that baseline, I will then work with our providers, NGOs, and other stakeholders to outline and implement specific activities to address the identified communities’ needs.

What do you love about your job? First and foremost, the rewarding experience of being part of a Social Team that works to make concrete and meaningful changes in the conditions of some of the most underprivileged communities in the world. Second, the opportunity to travel and learn first-hand about different supply chains, in a variety of countries and cultural settings.

What made you choose your career? I had the chance to work in different agricultural value chains, learning about how food is produced and commercialized, but mainly from a business perspective. Gradually, I started to realize that agriculture has a bigger impact that includes producers and their respective families, which made me look for opportunities in the third sector and companies like Twinings that care about the social dimension of the entire chain.

What do you think are the best skills that you bring to your job? I can create long-term, trustful relationships with my colleagues, I can adapt to different work environments and activities and I am capable of quickly understanding and interpreting new information.

Name three words that best describe you. Curious, committed, and empathetic.

How do you think your colleagues would describe you? Meticulous, reliable, and cheerful. 

What’s your favourite country you’ve visited? Italy, I lived there for 4 months and discovered that even the smallest town has great landscapes, good food and a rich culture.

What’s your favourite tea? Twinings English Breakfast. 

What’s your favourite herb? Yerba mate, a traditional south American herb, because having a good “mate” is always the perfect excuse to get together with your loved ones.

Rishi Deb

Job Title: NPD Manager - Tea

Tell us about your role at Twinings and what you do.I am one of the Master Blenders and work in our global Design & Development team with our NPD function, leading on tea and other innovation projects.

Tell us a typical day in the life of your role. Dynamic with market calls, innovation ideation, product design and development, analysing competition, creative exploration to find our next generation of tea and botanicals.

What do you love about your job? It's exciting to be working with such a wonderful set of team mates all around the world and on such an rich innovation pipeline to create products that delight our consumers around the world.

What made you choose your career? Passion for tea and the wonderful places where it grows on the planet.

What do you think are the best skills that you bring to your job? Ability to explore, connect with people and passion for tea and botanicals.

Name three words that best describe you. Energetic, explorer and passionate.

How do you think your colleagues would describe you? Friendly, approachable and a bit... over enthusiastic.

What’s your favourite country you’ve visited? Australia.

What’s your favourite tea? Darjeeling First Flush.

What’s your favourite herb? Rooibos.

Peris Ochieng

Job Title: Ethical Sourcing Manager, Africa

Tell us about your role at Twinings and what you do. My role is to work with tea producers in our supply chain to support them in identifying gaps and implementing programmes that promote ethical practices. I do this by conducting Twinings Community Needs Assessment (TCNA) and developing and implementing partnership programs to address the needs.

Tell us a typical day in the life of your role. My work is mostly routine and include conducting TCNA, report writing, regular communication and follow ups with producers to agree and implement TCNA action plans, partner meeting and conferences.

What do you love about your job? What I love most about my job is interacting with people of diverse backgrounds, conducting needs assessments and implementing projects that go a long way in improving living standards in communities where we source our tea from.

What made you choose your career? I chose this career because it gives me a chance to be part of the change that provides greater positive impact on people’s lives.

What do you think are the best skills that you bring to your job? I bring community development skills, training skills, needs assessment and social auditing skills, collaboration and persuasive skills.

Name three words that best describe you. Reliable, kind and honest.

How do you think your colleagues would describe you? My colleagues would describe me as kind, friendly and caring.

What’s your favourite country you’ve visited? Morocco.

What’s your favourite tea? Twinings English Breakfast.

What’s your favourite herb? Camomile.

Bipul Borah

Job Title: Ethical Sourcing Manager, India & Sri Lanka

Tell us about your role at Twinings and what you do. My role at Twinings gives an exciting opportunity to support Twinings’ ethical sourcing efforts by assessing, monitoring, and supporting the supply chain to improve ethical performance and help suppliers in making progress with responsible business expectations. The role involves development and nurturing business relationships with the local, national, and international stakeholders, visiting sourcing sites for assessment and monitoring, designing and launching new programmes and assessment tools for Sourced with Care programme to improve social and environment conditions for the farmers, workers, and the communities in the agriculture supply chain.

Tell us a typical day in the life of your role. There is no typical day as such as it depends. When in the office, I would catch up with our suppliers, I/NGO partners, tea associations, academics, or my team members and other stakeholders on areas of improvement, new development, work progress, support needed on any issues, besides desk review of reports, drafting updates for internal & external use. When in the field, I would be interacting with farmers, workers, managers, staff, and labour union members to get their response on specific areas of our need assessment, their ideas for improvements; or I would monitor programme quality through visiting project areas and meeting communities and stakeholders.

What do you love about your job? Twinings provides a supportive environment to deliver responsibilities and respects the ethical ways of doing business. My job gives a wide variety of opportunities to learn, engage and collaborate with variety of stakeholders and involve with challenging projects for driving change in the value chain. It provides scope to apply new ideas and innovations to identify and address ethical business issues and thereby to bring positive impact in people’s lives. The field work gives me chance to visit new places, meet people, learn new things, and practice photography.

What made you choose your career? I have been working in the development and sustainability fields across different geographies for some time. Creating shared value is one area I am particularly interested to continue working on to make impact on the business and society focusing on social impact, human rights, and environment. This is what I love to do and my role at Twinings has given me this opportunity.

What do you think are the best skills that you bring to your job? Knowledge of supply chain sustainability, shared value, programme design and implementation, developing tools and framework for supply chain assessment and influencing. Flexibility, collaborative and I am open to new ideas, take initiatives and can adapt positively while navigating through uncertainties and can find practical solutions to the problems.

Name three words that best describe you. Accountable, Positive and Resilient.

How do you think your colleagues would describe you? Approachable, committed, passionate, empowering, and confident as described my colleagues.

What’s your favourite country you’ve visited? Spain and Indonesia.

What’s your favourite tea? Assam tea and silver tips from Darjeeling and Sri Lanka.

What’s your favourite herb? Ashwagandha and Aloe Vera for their multiple health benefits.