New members of Fair Wear’s multi-stakeholder Board

Fair Wear is excited to announce new Board members from Industry and the NGO community

At its next meeting on March 3^rd, the tripartite, multistakeholder Board of Fair Wear Foundation will be joined by new members: Mr. Gopinath Parakuni from Indian labour rights NGO Cividep, and Mr. Stefan Rosenkranz from the German Sporting Goods Industry Federation.

Stefan Rosenkranz is the CEO of the German Sporting Goods Industry Federation (BSI e.V.) since 2021. In the 25 years before that, he held top management positions in sales, marketing and product development working at Oberalp, Fischer and Marker ski bindings. He has experience sourcing from several of the countries Fair Wear is active in. For ten years, he was the Managing Director of Oberalp Germany GmbH with its brands Salewa, Dynafit, Wild Country, Pomoca, Speedo and Silva. Stefan’s educational background is in economics and business administration, encompassing all aspects of management.

Gopinath Parakuni is a founding member of Cividep India and was its General Secretary since its inception in 2000. He did his Master’s in Social Work with specialisations in Personnel Management and Labour Welfare. He spent time working in English daily journalism before transitioning to civil society organisations concerned with the rights of Dalits, women, marginal farmers and informal sector workers, mainly in designing development programme interventions. Since stepping down as General Secretary, Gopinath continues to be a strategic advisor to Cividep as well as its representative in the Steering Committee of the STITCH Partnership that unites Cividep and Fair Wear with four other global partners working on labour rights in the garment sector.

We are pleased to have two new members whose values and experience align so closely with Fair Wear’s vision and mission. Their appointment to the board is particularly timely as we have set out a new strategy to contribute to systemic change towards a garment and footwear sector that promotes human rights in the world of work as key elements of an equal and just society. We look forward to drawing on Gopinath and Stefan’s expertise to achieve these aims.