Benita Singh Mentor 2010

Describe yourself briefly.

Benita Singh is a fair trade entrepreneur with a passion for connecting artisan groups around the world to wholesale markets. She is the Co-Founder and COO of Source4Style, the first online ethical sourcing platform connecting fashion and interior designers directly to sustainable textiles and raw materials suppliers around the globe. While at Yale University, she co-founded Mercado Global, a non-profit fair trade organization working with women’s coops in Guatemala. As President, she built marketing partnerships with companies from Whole Foods. She went on to work with artisan collectives across India, consulting on product development, supply chain management and marketing to ultimately build partnerships with ABC Carpet and Home and Barnes & Noble. Benita has served on the boards of the International Youth Foundation, South Asian Young Women Entrepreneurs’ Network, and Nest. Together with her mom, she has a fair trade toys company called Fig Toys that supports workers’ collectives in southern India maintaining the art of hand-painted lacware toys. Her work in the fields of fair trade and sustainable development has been recognized by Newsweek Magazine and Echoing Green.