Paul Rice

Paul Rice
Paul Rice at the 2008 World Economic Forum
Occupation	President and CEO of Fair Trade USA

Paul Rice is the President & CEO of Fair Trade USA, the leading third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in the United States. Since launching Fair Trade USA (previously TransFair) in 1998, Paul has pushed to mainstream the Fair Trade movement and expand its impact. He has challenged hundreds of companies to rework their global supply chains to obtain high-quality products that support community development and environmental protection.

Paul’s work as a social entrepreneur has helped over 1.2 million farmers receive a fair price for their crops and compete in the global marketplace through direct, long-term contracts with international buyers. With thousands of certified products found in 200,000 retail locations today, Fair Trade USA’s Fair Trade Certified label is considered to be the leading mark of sustainability and responsible sourcing in the US.

Paul has been criticized in recent years for his decision to resign Fair Trade USA’s membership from Fairtrade Labeling Organization (FLO), the international fair trade labeling organization. While he argues that the split was necessary for expansion, some critics worry that scaling Fair Trade will dilute its impact. Paul is committed to expanding Fair Trade to impoverished laborers, whether or not they work on a cooperative, through his “Fair Trade for All” platform.

Paul was raised in Dallas and Austin, Texas, the son of a single mother. He graduated from St. Mark's School of Texas.

Paul was an entrepreneurial boy, selling newspapers, mowing lawns, and gardening in his community. By saving his earnings, Paul was able to self-finance most of his college tuition at Yale University, where he enrolled in 1978.

At Yale, Paul studied Political Science and Economics, which sparked an interest in the issues of global hunger, poverty, and underdevelopment, particularly as they related to rural farming. At nineteen, he took a year off from school and went to China to learn about land reform and the peasants' struggle to organize cooperatives. This experience cemented his decision to enter the field of international development after graduating in 1983. Upon graduation, he spent over a decade working with agricultural farmers in Nicaragua, before returning to the US for a graduate degree. In 1996, Paul earned a Master's of Business Administration at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.

After college, Paul bought a one-way ticket to Nicaragua to work with smallholder farmers, thinking he would stay only one year. As it turned out, Nicaragua became home to Paul for 11 years. There, Paul became a specialist in rural economic and cooperative development. Traveling throughout the country, he helped hundreds of smallholder farmers organize cooperatives.