All can be fair in love and trade wars, we like to say. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Lea Esterhuizen about how responsible supply chain management adds to a company's bottom line.
Justin: Welcome to the responsible supply chain show where we explore the world of responsible sourcing and resilient supply chains. I'm your host, Justin Dillon. And in each episode, we'll dive into real stories from some of the world's best business, government, and thought leaders protecting people, planet, and province. Let's get in. Okay.
Episode 10. I mean, who'd have thought who would have thought we'd get into double digit territory? I don't know if we should get a cake out with a, you know, 10 candles. I'm not sure, but I'm celebrating over here. Number 10, when you get to 10, I I don't know if I I really remember being 10 years old.
10 is at the you're right you're right at the edge of adolescence. You're not quite a preteen, but you're you're just you're walking into it. Speaking speaking of adolescence, have you watched the Netflix show Adolescence? I I watched I just recently watched it, and I I don't I don't know if I've I don't know when something that I've watched has had such an impact on me. I mean, it just stayed with me for days and I'm not gonna ruin it.
I'm I'm I'm it it I I will tell you, it is difficult but important to watch. And sometimes, that's just what we need. We need things that are difficult and important to hear and difficult and important to watch. What makes a great artist or a great creator is someone who can wrestle with difficult things in such a palpable and meaningful way, and this show on Netflix does that. It it takes on the issue of social media and kids and the impact on kids.
What blew me away about this show is how they did it. You wouldn't if you didn't know a lot about film, you might know or you didn't read up on the show, you might not you might miss the fact that each of the four episodes, which are, you know, about fifty minutes, each of them are called oners or one take. What that means is the camera never stops. It never cuts. You're essentially watching a one hour play.
I went deep on this. I watched all the YouTube videos on how they made it. It's just it just blew me away. Here's the thing. You can make something that's important.
Yes. And that has social commentary. Yes. But then you can make it in such a way that you make it so difficult, so impactful, the way in which you made it. They could have easily made that show, edited it like you would typically edit it.
But they put this forcing function in creating the show that forced everyone working on it to be at their absolute best performance. The lighting people, the actors, the sound. Because if anyone screwed up, you would have to start all over again. You couldn't cut. And I just think it was genius that the makers of this, the producers of this, chose to put that forcing function of, we this subject matter is so important to us that we're going to make it impossible for us to not focus and give our absolute best.
And I'm telling you, there are like some of these kids that are performing in this are gonna receive not only receive an amazing career ahead of them, but are gonna receive awards for what they did. What does this have to do with responsible sourcing? It asks the question that we all need to be asking about everything that we do. How can we ensure that the products that we are putting into the world aren't hurting anyone, either in the production of or the use of? I challenge anyone to watch this show and not ponder that question.
How are the things that we're making, the things that we're putting into the world? Is the production of these things harmful in any way, inter responsible supply chains? Or are they harmful to to the people that are using them? And whether you're in social media or in something with the supply chain, this is a question. This love where does the responsibility fall?
This is a question that this show provokes, particularly in social media. This week, I speak with doctor Leah Esterhausen, a data scientist focused on human rights and supply chains, and the founder of the consultancy group Ann Wider out of Amsterdam. This is someone who understands the problem she is solving, which is the protection of vulnerable workers in supply chains. I found her someone who is, speaks from a deep level of expertise and conviction. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Leah, where am I finding you today?
Lea: I'm actually in Haarlem, due West of Amsterdam. I'm out of the office today and working from home. Which is great.
Justin: I'm glad you're here. I have a pressing question. What do European companies think about The United States right now?
Lea: I think European companies are a bit shell shocked.
Justin: Yeah. Okay.
Lea: But I'm hoping European companies are good at distinguishing between, a government policy, unwise trade policy, and the American people and their peers in. But I I'm sure shell shocked is the right word. Some some in disbelief.
Justin: Well, I've just just so you know, it's it's the same over here. We're still we're all somewhat shell shocked as well. And I think everyone is trying to find and it's true. I mean, everyone's trying to find a sense of normalcy. Well, it's good to meet you.
You have one of the most fascinating profiles. You're a data scientist, tell me if this is correct. Data scientist working with multinationals on supply chain responsibility, that tracks. But then you've spent, was it twenty three years focused on working on state sponsored violence, genocide, forced labor, violence against children in places like South Africa, Bosnia, Middle East, UK. Also true?
Lea: Yeah. Also true, indeed.
Justin: So maybe you can start from the beginning. Where where'd you grow up? And I'm assuming where you grew up led you to that work, and then maybe walk us to how that work leads to what you do today at NWider.
Lea: Well, I, grew up in a party in South Africa. I guess I I had a hippie mother who was very well informed. And in the South African context, she was appropriately uncomfortable in the LEGOLAND I grew up in and we lived in. So she chose to educate us as children about why there was a mellow yellow van that used to come and collect the nannies and housekeepers when they didn't have a passbook. A mellow yellow van was actually a childlike reference to the yellow police vans that used to collect black South Africans who didn't have their permit books to be in the white areas.
So she taught us, I was really fascinated when I was about five about what these men were doing and why they seemed so unkind. And why my own kind of nanny's sister was taken away in tears one day. And my mother sat me down and she said, you know, this beautiful suburb is a surreal place because just beyond it, some ugly stuff is going down. So I was taught growing up what that was about and what social injustice was all about. We were the beneficiaries of that social injustice, which left me with a very strong sense of moral debt.
When the revolution happened in '94 in South Africa, there was a secret part of me that wanted to become an architect or, you know, an artist. It felt to me as a righteous teenager that that kind of career option was indulgent. So I fell backwards into data science essentially with the idea that, you know, every revolution needs good data because when the dust settles, you need to know where the urgency lies. And that visibility means that whatever pot of resources you've got left, you can dedicate to fixing the worst problems first. It could make a contribution to turning the lights on and getting, you know, getting stuff fixed.
Justin: Tell me how that led to, you know, working in conflict war zones.
Lea: Majored in African politics. At the time, the, the truth commission was South African truth commission was the, the foundation stones were being laid. I found this incredibly exciting. So, so essentially got involved in, doing a master's degree in data science or social research methods, as it was called at the time. And then I got a PhD scholarship.
I still, to this day, am convinced it was an administrative error. And this was during the era when when in The UK, you know, asylum seekers from Darfur were being sent back to Khartoum to Sudan, so it was very tragic. But then kind of pulled sideways by a former student of mine to work in the MENA region during the Arab Spring.
Justin: So much there. So what were you doing in these areas?
Lea: My interest in setting up systems to understand what the early warnings are of genocide or institutionalized violence or humanitarian crisis, so that UN agencies mostly in those years could see the early warning and start to act, start to deploy resources, people, you know, start to get kind of local community radio stations, you know, pumped up and moving, that kind
Justin: of thing. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. I can see how I'm starting to put together how you got to where you are. Because that because, yeah, that's prox the the the we we call that proximate data gathering, which is how you find this information.
Most people would look at the work you did. It's like, that's that's social work. That is humanitarian work. But you were doing data work. I mean, you were doing data collection.
Lea: So
Justin: how did that lead to you now working with multinationals and bringing It sounds like you bring a lot of you know, that initial work into what you do today.
Lea: Correct. Just one comment back to that history before I dive into that question is that I want to make it clear that I'm often self conscious when people talk about their pasts. Sounds like you were a fully fledged professional throughout. Was very much a learner. And from the early stages, I was often just doing kind of foot soldier work in the building of those data systems.
So from-
Justin: Are you saying that you were making it up as you went
Lea: along? Yes,
Justin: of course. Right? You mean, wait, wait, so no one gave you a plan and steps to follow?
Lea: Well, it's life, no? Well, but that's Yeah.
Justin: I think that people think that this type of work is somehow so empirical and planned, and that somehow justice is just a paint by numbers. It is 100% making it up. I got to interview someone years ago who worked with Doctor. King when they were getting started, and they were all of like 18, 19 years old. And he told me, he's like, Justin, we were 100 making it up as we went along.
I know it looks great from where we are now, but we were making it up. And he was just sending us out going, their number one strategy was go figure it out. That sounds like what you were doing.
Lea: And actually that's the hook. It's about going to figure it out. And when there's a big crisis, there's an urgency to go and figure it out. And you have to figure it out first. And it was the, where the hell is the data going to come from question landed on my desk.
And that was one I was drawn to. So the commonality, the kind of, the tie that binds genocide and institutionalized violence and forced migration on one hand and human rights along supply chains on the other was a tragedy on a platinum mine. I was working for Save the Children's Sweden based in Deirut. I'd fallen pregnant, these things happen. And there was this headline, about a group of rock drillers that had been shot and killed as they fled for home during a workers' protest, shot and killed by the post apartheid police.
I saw the story and thought, Oh my God, what happened there? The circumstances on this mine had been that as the workers protest kind of evolved over five days, fatalities had grown from day one to day five, and attendance at the strike had grown. Now in my, all my years, twenty three years, as you mentioned on genocide and forced migration, I'd never seen this phenomenon before. I'd never seen people, you know, people essentially drawn to a situation in which they stood a higher chance to lose their lives, you flee. So I thought, well, you know, let's find who knew what in these circumstances.
So, and discovered the mine was only financially audited. There was no social auditing going on and extractives. So discovered quite quickly extractives was all a big invisible soup and that it wasn't just extractives. I then thought, oh, shipping, shipping and fishing is going to be very invisible. And indeed, again, the same set of circumstances applied.
And I started to encounter the concept of the social audit, was a bit shocked by the social audit. Because as a data scientist, data ability is really important. Know, You need to bloody make sure that the picture you're generating is accurate. And there's just too much falsification in a situation where you've got to schedule time and external inspector coming to visit the site, fully announced, you're not going get business Are
Justin: you saying social audits aren't perfect?
Lea: Yes. You
Justin: mean the primary tool that companies use to get data out of their supply chain? Is it very accurate? This is shocking. This is news. This is going to be at front of the page of the New York Times today.
Lea: You know, actually a social audit can be can have a phenomenal value add if you have a phenomenal auditor, but it's so contingent on the human beings. And worst case scenario, it's reassurance theater.
Justin: Reassurance theater. Oh, that is going on a Post it note. Okay. So it's telling the story that we wanna hear, not the one that we need to hear. Got it.
I think that for most people, they're never gonna go to a platinum mine, even if they work in extractives industry. They're likely, or in electronics industry, they're never gonna go onto a shipping trawler. You're not gonna see this level. But companies still are interested in this data. That's Can you tell us a little bit more about how NWider does that for companies?
Lea: Sure. Essentially, Unwider monitors human rights impacts and working conditions using mobile tech. The joy about a global supply chain in 2025 is that generally speaking, with you talking about smallholders or workers, they have a mobile phone in their pocket. And so what Unwired does is use the mobile channel to gather data at regular intervals. We reach out, you know, four times a year to a workforce or to the kind of smallholders participating or sending their cocoa or sugar to a cooperative.
And we check-in and say, right, ask 20 questions. It's a five minute survey, always in the language of the worker or smallholder's choosing. She never uses her voice, never mentions her name, simply presses 1 for yes, 2 for no, 3 for don't know. So low tech on the data collection side, not an app, not assuming any digital or numeracy literacy. Because as you and I know, where these human rights risks are concentrated, they are systemic risks.
They're not risks that rely on the individual employer who's decided over dinner what labor practice they to apply to their workforce. Frequently, it's more complex. There are deep roots for these particular labor practices. So a collaboration of brands all looking at the same dashboards and reports and acting together stands it gives put puts us in a much better position to actually improve the picture.
Justin: Every board, every management team right now is thinking about their supply chain. Probably not the way that we think about supply chains, but they're thinking about it. Right? Tariffs have now changed the way everyone is thinking about where things come from. And it's interesting because supply chains have had a kind of big last five years.
COVID made people think about supply chains, went away. Laws came. People started thinking about it, away. Does it feel like now with the tariff and trade, focus that it's gonna be impossible to think about a business going forward without thinking about how the supply chain's structured. Can you give me a little bit of sense of, like, where we are in, like, the sea change around awareness of challenges and, how supply chains snake through the world?
Lea: So resilience is all about relationships. And relationships are strongest when they're based on integrity and transparency, when they're based on trust. So, you know, in these circumstances, resilience comes from visibility in relationships. What we see amongst our clients is they're bracing themselves. Sustainability teams understand that this is a dark moment for human rights, in the sense that when supply chains need to change quickly, when there's a kind of high pace of change, you know, relationships are compromised in a big way.
And you don't have the kind of long history, deep knowledge of one another anymore, you often kind of suddenly partnering up with trading partners. Don't know, you don't understand the legal You know, everyone's sprinting in the dark. So essentially, what I see is sustainability teams to understand that they'll have to become even more savvy about how they conduct due diligence with these new trading partners. You know, that's gonna be a
Justin: Yeah. And can this be a reset? I mean, with the shock and awe, to borrow an old term, of how supply chains are gonna be reset, for sustain for folks that work in responsible supply chains, the old parlance of the way you talk about things will need to change. And it seems like supply chains are gonna be scrutinized. Choices are gonna be scrutinized much more based on resilience and durability.
And my the the hopeaholic in me believes that inside of that can be arg the argument of human rights is part of sustainability, is part of durability, is part of resilience. And if you miss that that box yeah. I I mean, why can't you just make that part of the the decision tree?
Lea: Why do the front running brands with mature due diligence systems take an interest in human rights along their supply chain because viable businesses treat their people right. Viable, reliable trading partners don't need to rely on forced labor to run a business. So as soon as you have that those elements in your supply chain, you know, it's fragile. You know, the minute there's a pandemic or a change Yeah. You know, it's gonna be it's gonna be fragile.
Justin: Well, you talk you talk about how there are two reasons why companies do sustainability due diligence, the monitoring, addressing of impacts on people and planet. Purely to comply, which is external regulatory, and and and the other is to protect their supply chain and brand, strategic driver. Can you say a little bit more about those two reasons, and can they play together?
Lea: These companies who fall under the pure compliance category are companies who will search for certifications where there's the biggest interval in terms of time or the longest expiry date. So this is certification process that will happen every one to five years. And that's enough. That'll be enough because of the So it's all about box checking. It's not about taking it seriously because they don't see it as a strategic risk to the supply chain or their business.
Yep. But then the other bunch see human rights as a strategic risk, human rights as either a strengthener or a risk supply chain and business. And so they get going with infrastructure. You know, C level gets it. It's part of risk management.
It's non financial risk management.
Justin: Well, I mean, I've heard you also say that there's a the term like due diligence has a negative association. And I'm I'm I'm I'm a word person. I like words. I believe that words make worlds. And I believe that we sometimes words become our little darlings and we wanna hold on to terms that we've grown up with or studied under or built a career around.
And what I think we forget is that words sometimes have a past due date. And we don't know how to reinterpret or re explain what we're trying to achieve in the world. And when you hear due diligence, it does sound like something's wrong or that you've got it it sounds like going and taking a test. And instead of fixing something or improving or optimizing, I mean, I imagine if you just completely got rid of due diligence and called it optimizing.
Lea: Yeah. I love that. Actually, I I can't help but notice that, often in when it comes to social justice and human rights, we like to steal vocabulary from the finance sector. So we like to pull frameworks and vernacular from the finance sector, because we think then people will take it seriously and shut the shit out of it. But actually, the tricky bit with the concept of due diligence, and I have huge respect for it, I absolutely think we need regulation in place to insist on it.
However, the cultural pitfall with due diligence is that it comes from the financial and transactional world where it's all about finding and not fixing, Exactly as you said. What frustrates me about the focus on due diligence is it's all gloom. It's this notion that all we're doing is chasing the identification of risk. If detected the risk and there's some action plan in place, usually entirely the responsibility of the supplier to fix the problem, then we've checked those two boxes and done and we communicate our little log of number of issues detected, number of caps in place, and then we sorted. You know, my frustration is, A) it's not just gloom, you know, that intelligence process, that listening process needs to pick up the good stuff, needs to pick up improvements and progress, that's what should get everyone excited because we get what we focus on.
Let's focus on improvement. And let's inject some new language in here that also includes improvement and also includes, you know, shared responsibility by buyers and suppliers in generating strain that affects workers.
Justin: Somehow, there's this idea that when you buy services or data from companies like ours, that somehow you have to hold on to and you're in control of it. Why aren't companies sharing this information freely, opening it up to their suppliers to help them run their businesses, not as a stick, but as a carrot. Do you what's in the psychology around just like my data, my problems, I'm gonna hold on to what I pay for it?
Lea: I think it comes from the the arrogance that's wired into the architecture of a global supply chain. I think the imbalance of power is that the one who pays the bill stipulates how the rules work. And, you know, intel and information is power. So there's a little bit of an assumption that, you know, the visibility needs to come to us, we need to have this vantage point, you know, we'll tell you what you need to know. And I think it doesn't serve the supply chain.
No. It doesn't serve the supply chain to have, you know, have the control tower staffed by half of the professionals who need to be in there. You know, supply chain is a joint venture. There's a whole lot of contextual factors that explain impacts along a supply chain, not merely an employer. Also, buyer and purchasing practices are in the mix.
So it's a joint venture, you jointly form and shape the circumstances that apply. Therefore, intel about that supply chain should entirely be shared. Software platforms should be hardwired to ensure that that data is shared. And that's what sets the whole relationship up for success when the shit starts to hit the fan, when things get hard. If you're both singing off the same song sheet, you know that there's a challenge, it's been coming for a while.
You've already been chatting about it every now and again. Then you're ready. You're ready.
Justin: The whole point of this show is to help those that are working in this space to optimize their work, to improve, to learn soft diplomacy skills, to really learn how to be a contributor to the business. So given the shock and awe and chaos theory of the tariffs that we're living under, what advice would you give to supply chain managers who still need to do the work to comply with these laws, of which there's, you know, dozens of supply chain regulatory laws around the around the world, including CS triple d?
Lea: Don't do this because of regulation. If you if you do it in a thoughtful, in a thoughtful manner, and you you go for the systems and infrastructure approach rather than the reactive pure compliance approach.
Justin: Yeah.
Lea: Then you'll be in the situation you need to be to handle this period of deep uncertainty. Secondly, look after your relationships. In this period of uncertainty, you know, ensure that your communication with your suppliers is respectful. Don't squeeze them too hard. Don't turn up the pressure, it's not going to serve you well, you know, in the storm.
Thirdly, you know, be proactive in your priority areas, you know, turn the lights on and stay close to those suppliers in areas that are considered higher human rights risk, areas in supply chain sourcing geographies, particular activities associated with higher human rights risk, have the additional measures in place, use, you know, use good data and tech, you know, to help you here.
Justin: That is fantastic guidance, and I couldn't agree with you more. It seems like this is an incredible time for buyers and sellers to learn new collaboration skills, new learn new learn the value of their trust and increase their trust. Leah, thank you so much for coming on the show. You're just I hope you can come back on. You're a wealth of knowledge, and you are clearly, one of the, most fascinating and, heartfelt or heart led guests that we've had here.
So, keep going. Keep being a hopeaholic.
Lea: Thank you, Justin. And thank you also a little shout out to our friend Bora and yourself.
Justin: Oh, yes.
Lea: Connecting us. But it's really been a privilege. I love listening to your podcast, You know, you're such a word wordsmith and such a kind of generous host. So Thank you. For for giving that to me today.
Justin: Well, I'll make sure that that that finds its way into the edit. This is the one thing, the part of our show where we dig deeper into one idea from our interview. What's most striking about listening to Leah is that she is both a brilliant supply chain data scientist and incredibly useful to vulnerable workers in those supply chains. You see, she's found a way to offer both value to the business while also supporting the values that everyone in the business probably agrees with. You can tell by listening to her that she has built a life and a career of purpose.
She's proof that it's possible to be both useful to the company you serve and useful to the wider world you get the privilege to live in. Look, supply chain management is a grind and it just got harder. There is no mistaking that. But operating our supply chains with a focus on protecting workers offers us something much deeper than just a paycheck. Viktor Frankl, one of my heroes, the famous psychologist and Holocaust survivor, said that when humans stop living with a sense of purpose, they devolve into mere pleasure.
My hope for the community we are building here is that each and every one of you find purpose in your work. Because if you're working on supply chains, you have an incredible opportunity to improve both the business and the world and create returns that will last way beyond your life. Thank you for listening. Please make sure to subscribe so that we can let you know when the next episode comes out. And please go to Freedom.co to sign up for more updates.
See you next time.
Get notified every time we post an new episode
