Jessi is proud to be an in-house consultant with the Equitable Earth Coalition, which is working to bring climate finance directly to Indigenous Peoples and local communities. EqE focuses on ending deforestation and raises the bar for the voluntary carbon market with a new standard, best practices and platform based on quality, equity and radical transparency.
Heartwood worked with ISEAL Alliance to develop a primer on Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) that goes beyond mere consent, and produced impact assessment guidance for landscape-scale initiatives, to help sustainability standards and their partners bring greater equity, transparency and credibility to claims.
Heartwood has worked on several initiatives with Sustainable Food Lab (SFL) and global food and beverage companies towards ambitious sustainable agriculture goals, including improving returns on investment (ROI), resiliency, premiums, and worker wages for farmers that are applying sustainable and regenerative agriculture practices.
Heartwood worked with Everland - a company which strives to help people prosper from conserving their forests and wildlife through the sale of Verified Emission Reductions (VRRs) credits - to create a due diligence (DD) framework linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and conducted due diligence for a project in their portfolio.
Heartwood Principal, Jessica Grillo, served on the Technical Advisory Committee of the Living Income Community of Practice (LICoP) from 2017-2024 and wrote several papers and guidance on measuring gaps in economic equity among farmers certified to sustainable agriculture standards.
Heartwood supported the revision of this leading sustainability standard, based on a systems approach that emphasizes risk managements and a vision for more humane, environmentally responsible and socially just textile supply chains.
From 2019-2023, Heartwood worked with IDH on a multi-stakeholder initiative to galvanize businesses and certification systems to advance on living wages across supply chains, including new tools to enable wage transparency and action.
In 2022 and 2023, Aldi piloted an innovative living wage verification process on banana farms. As a core partner, Heartwood built capacity among all actors and facilitated dialogs between worker representatives and farm management.
Heartwood wrote the Living Wage Playbook for AIM-Progress and its 48 member companies. The “how to guide” aims to help members build and implement living wage strategies for their employees and across their supply chains.
Heartwood worked with GIZ and corporate partners to better understand employment and compensation systems across supply chains, in order to make informed and meaningful investments to improve worker wages.
Heartwood developed and delivered auditor training programs for Impact Buying Academy, to build skills around wage auditing and the IDH living wage platform, thereby strengthening accountability and trust in results.
Heartwood worked with Burton to develop policy on engaging civil society, as part of their alignment and membership with the Fair Labor Association (FLA)
Heartwood worked with over dozen European grocery retailers to validate fruit suppliers' reporting on worker wages and estimate living wage gaps.
Jessi co-led the early-stage development of the first living wage certification system for the US, and is now a proud member of the Living Wage for US Board of Directors.
"It has been a delight to work with Jessi as a key supporter of the work we do at IDH on living wages. Her understanding of living wages, the opportunities and complexities in that field coupled with her enthusiasm, commitment and team spirit have made her support instrumental. We are grateful for her assistance and commitment to our mission."
– Ronald Sanabria, Senior Program Manager, IDH
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