“From suppliers to industry initiatives, there are endless opportunities to create positive impact for both the people who make our products and the planet we depend on.”
Melinda is a trusted and experienced human rights and sustainability specialist with over a decade of experience advising Australia and New Zealand’s leading fashion brands and largest multi-category retailers. A Churchill Fellowship recipient, she founded and co-ordinated the Australian arm of the global not-for-profit Fashion Revolution for close to a decade.
With considerable experience in end-to-end programme implementation, having worked both in-house and as a consultant with listed and privately owned retailers, in addition to fibre producers and industry associations, she is committed to building and embedding business-wide capacity to future proof human rights and sustainability agendas.
Fascinated by the collective genius of those who make our products, and driven by a passion for delivering equity to the supply chain, she has visited suppliers across the length of the value chain from cotton and wool farms to mills and manufacturers in Australia, Europe, the US and Asia.
Melinda has extensive expertise spanning global regulations, supply chain transformation, modern slavery and human rights due diligence, grievance mechanisms, governance frameworks, supplier and stakeholder engagement, third party standard verification and claims compliance, policy development, supply chain mapping & traceability, sustainable textiles strategy and execution, and communications.
In 2019, Melinda launched Legacy Summit, Australasia’s leading fashion summit on doing business responsibly, is a Good Design Australia award winner and fashion impact jury member and former Deputy Chair of the Fair Trade Association of Australia and New Zealand. Melinda’s thought leadership has featured in mainstream media outlets including The Guardian, SMH, Vogue and Harpers Bazaar including appearances on Network 10’s The Project and ABC’s War on Waste series.
