Rebecca Dunn, Executive Director

Rebecca (Becca) Dunn is the Executive Director of Fair Trade LA, a nonprofit that officially made Los Angeles the largest Fair Trade City in North America and the fourth largest in the world. She and the previous Executive Director Elisha Chan host the FAIR Talks Podcast: educating everyday people for extraordinary change.  

Becca brings over 20 years of experience to her role. With a distinguished career working with various non-profits, she has dedicated her professional life to combating human trafficking, supporting fair trade initiatives, and promoting social enterprises. Her deep passion for creating a better world through Fair Trade is evident in her extensive background and unwavering commitment.

Becca's career includes a significant tenure at Ten Thousand Villages, the world's first Fair Trade retailer, where she spent the past 8 years. Her global perspective is enriched by her travels to 35 countries, which has profoundly influenced her understanding and advocacy for fair trade practices.

Becca and her husband Kris are the proud parents to their beautiful son, Callen. Her family life adds to her motivation and dedication to making a positive impact through her work.

Brittany Skiles, Board Chair

Brittany works at Mount Saint Mary's University in institutional advancement, and serves on a campus team working towards making MSMU a Fair Trade designated university. As a graduate of Vanguard University of Southern California, she first got involved with promoting Fair Trade practices as a way to combat labor trafficking and worked at the Global Center for Women and Justice before moving to Los Angeles. On a trip to Kenya, Brittany witnessed first hand how artisans employed by a company paying fair wages with high ethical standards has generational impact on poverty alleviation and she has been an advocate of supporting Fair Trade initiatives and organizations ever since.

Elena Alcerro, Secretary

Elena traveled to the Dominican Republic, where she saw the exploitation of Haitian sugarcane workers. After seeing the conditions in the Bateyes she decided that she would no longer be part of the system that makes their lives so difficult. Elena founded a nonprofit, HUMAIN, and hopes that through HUMAIN she will one day be able to improve the quality of life for sugarcane workers across the Dominican Republic. Elena is the representative of Loyola Marymount University Fair Trade and the Oxfam America Club co-president. She works to educate the LMU community about Fair Trade and to show them how the purchases they make each day, on and off campus, can have a profound impact on people and communities around the world. 

Erin Wallace, Treasurer

Erin works as a CPA and maintains bookkeeping clients from the business management company were she started her career. She has helped to run teacher trainings in LA with SCOE and UCLA and worked for SRA/McGraw-Hill selling products to LAUSD. Erin is passionate about equality of all kinds, climate issues, education, and ending homelessness and poverty. In her personal time, she pursues interests in photography, design, genealogy, and documentary films.

Joan Harper, Board of Directors 

Joan co-founded FTLA corporation in 2005.  Joan was active with the Office of Life, Justice and Peace of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for 16 years where she promoted domestic anti-poverty and global solidarity programs, including fair trade. Joan has an MBA from Loyola Marymount University and prior work experience in the corporate sector.  She has travelled to India, Thailand, Ghana, El Salvador and Honduras with Catholic Relief Services, experiencing firsthand development programs in agriculture, micro-finance, and fair trade.  Most recently she visited Fair Trade artisan cooperatives in Palestine to see their work and hear their stories.

Laurel Averill, Board of Directors 

Amrita Thadani, Board of Directors 

Amrita Thadani started her career as a Fashion Stylist right out of college and worked her way up as an independent Costume Designer for films and advertising. She worked in India, where textile design and access to the cotton industry allowed her to totally immerse herself in the process. With over 10 years of work experience, she moved to New York and studied fashion at Parsons. After graduating, she continued to work as a fashion stylist while volunteering on weekends with local refugee groups. As she developed meaningful relationships with the women, she learned about some of the biggest challenges facing refugees including secure housing, adjusting to a difference culture, finding a job, surviving on food stamps, and learning a foreign language. This lead her to start NEOCOCO in the Fall of 2017, a mission-driven apparel company that creates jobs for women refugees and displaced women through the art of hand embroidery.

Robin Tolkan-Doyle, Board of Directors