Jenifer Jackson

Jenifer Jackson’s interest in agricultural workers began at a young age, when ICE officials came to her elementary school to try to take children away from the school. Her concern for how workers expanded to concern for the environment, leading her to earn a BA in International Relationship and Environmental Studies at Lewis & Clark College in 2010, and then an MA/MBA joint degree in International Environmental Policy and Sustainable Business Development from the Middlebury Institution of International Studies at Monterey in 2015. From there, she joined Fair Trade USA to establish the domestic certification program, focusing on supporting agricultural employers in providing fair and decent working conditions, and ensuring workers understand those rights. In her work at Fair Trade USA, Jenifer quickly realized that for the program to be impactful, workers must have agency. She has since then focused on building out the worker engagement and worker voice pieces of the Fair Trade program to develop different mechanisms to amplify the workers’ ability to advocate for themselves. In her current role as Director in the Program Development and Operations Team, Jenifer is focusing on strategic program innovations related to worker voice across all of Fair Trade USA’s commodities.