Richard Adams

Richard is currently chair of the Fair Trade Advocacy Office in Brussels and has spent his working life in founding and developing several successful charitable, community-owned, or co-operative enterprises promoting sustainability. Born in BIrmingham, UK, in 1946 he's an alumnus of St. John’s College, Durham with a degree in Sociology and a Diploma in Theology. His first jobs were in regional industrial development in the North East of England and Scotland. In 1973 he established a fair trade agricultural imports company in London for farmers in India and East Africa and went on to found Traidcraft, the UK’s largest fair trade company and was the initiator and first director of the Fairtrade Foundation. He also established an organic supermarket chain, has written several books on fair trade and corporate social responsibility and was for 20 years a member of the EU’s Economic and Social Committee where he also chaired the European Nuclear Energy Forum. He has founded and developed companies that have focussed on the issues of fair trade, health, social exclusion and ageing, international development, sustainable energy, and environmentally aware consumerism. He has held advisory and non-executive roles in a wide range of businesses and policy bodies including major energy companies, EU institutions and NGOs.