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Quinn is an experienced specialist in labor and hu- research project. For the first time, I was told that I could
man rights, serving as a resource for businesses, investors, decide to focus on anything, which forced me to think
governments, intergovernmental organizations, workers about what truly interested and inspired me. I ultimately
and civil society. He has been with Verité for 15 years chose to focus on forced disappearances in Mexico. This
and leads the WAVE (Worker Agency, Voice and Empow- helped me to determine my path forward, and I current-
erment) and AREA (Applied Research for Evidence & ly research similar topics. I started as an intern at Verité
Action) practice groups. over 17 years ago, and while labor issues weren’t origi-
He has spent many years conducting field research nally my main area of interest, I have come to see that
into labor issues related to coffee farming, having visited labor intersects with a number of other human rights
Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, Brazil and issues and that a lack of decent working conditions and
Uganda to gain an understanding of the sector’s practic- wages is a root cause of a range of issues, such as pover-
es. His objective is to help eliminate serious labor and ty, inequality, migration, and insecurity.
human rights violations from global supply chains.
Together with Miguel, they have penned a number What motivated Verité to create the
of articles on the topic of labor in coffee. Verité’s re- COFFEE project, and what are its main
search has found a significant risk of forced labor and objectives?
child labor in the coffee sector across various Latin
American countries. Surprisingly, mainstream risk as- I conducted and overseen research on labor condi-
sessment services have labeled the coffee sector as low tions in the coffee sector in Guatemala, Mexico, Colom-
or moderate risk in these countries. bia, Brazil, and Uganda, which revealed a high level of
In the following interview, I wanted to delve risk of forced labor, child labor, and wage and hour vio-
deeper into the issues discussed during the lecture lations in many of these countries. We found that al-
and gain further clarity on the strategies that can be though there are a number of emerging regulatory re-
adopted by companies to address labor risks. Here’s quirements and increased consumer and buyer
what Quinn had to say. expectations related to labor conditions, there was a lack
of concrete, usable resources to guide coffee producers
Could you tell us a bit about your back- and other supply chain actors on steps that they can take
ground and experience in the field of to effectively identify, address, and prevent labor issues
labor and human rights? in the coffee sector.

I began working in human rights in Guatemala when
I was 19, as the supervisor of international election ob-
servers for the 2003 presidential elections. I subsequent-
ly got a graduate degree in human rights in Guatemala
and worked with an indigenous rights organization. After
returning from Guatemala, I worked on a program pro-
viding free educational services to the children of migrant
farmworkers in the United States and began interning at It is key to the
Verité when I was 24. Since then, I have conducted re-
search and overseen projects on forced labor, human survival of the cof-
trafficking, labor migration, recruitment, child labor and
other topics across over 25 countries, mostly in Latin fee sector that we
America. I started working in the coffee sector in 2008
when I oversaw and conducted a four-year U.S. Depart- identify scalable
ment of Labor-funded research project on indicators of
forced labor in the Guatemalan coffee sector. cost-effective
What inspired you to work in the field of models to improve
human rights and labor?
working conditions
At 14, when I did a year of homeschooling after
getting into some trouble at school, I had to do a year-long in the sector.

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