Dr Henrietta Lake is an independent consultant advising brands and retailers on human rights in their global supply chains.

For the last 5 years Henri has been responsible for designing and delivering Sainsbury's Supermarkets ethical trade strategy across its global supply chain in partnership with commercial and technical colleaguesb, suppliers, NGOs and trade unions. She led Sainsbury's Group response to the UK Modern Slavery Act and has been responsible for embedding respect for human rights throughout the business. This included running the cross-functional Modern Slavery Working Group; co-designing and implementing Sainsbury's new modern slavery risk tool and developing mitigation and remediation plans for high risk supply chains.

She serves on the technical advisory committee for numerous initiatives to combat forced labour including for Stronger Together/ Clearview, the Consumer Goods Forum and the Workforce Disclosure Initiative. She is also currently working with a group of the world's largest clothing and footwear brands to improve their purchasing practices.

Henri has also headed the responsible sourcing team at Primark, and helped design and implement Nike’s new model of worker-centred supplier engagement and performance monitoring, starting with a 3-year pilot in Indonesia and then roll out across its supply chain.

She has worked in more than 20 countries and developed her expertise through programmes in factories and on farms in China, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Thailand and West Africa that are regarded as pioneering in her field. With a focus on building supplier capabilities to identify and address their own challenges, often through improved worker engagement and the intelligent use of data, she has led efforts that link improvements in labour rights to business profitability.

Henri graduated from Oxford University and obtained her PhD in political science from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in the USA. Her doctoral research examined the business benefits of improved working conditions, focusing on how advanced human resource management (HRM) systems and work organisation impact factory productivity. Previously, she was a financial journalist at The Mail on Sunday and then The Times.