Claire Petrovich

I attribute my success to allowing myself to be a teacher and a student in my job. I teach my clients in one aspect, but I allow them to teach me in a different category, and vice versa. I think that helps not just for us - me and the clients and the customers - to create a better relationship with each other, but it allows a certain level of understanding and humility to work forward together, versus making them feel belittled. This approach has been key to building trust and creating collaborative partnerships where we can actually move forward and make meaningful improvements.

Claire credits early mentors who believed in her potential and gave her opportunities early in her career as major influences in her professional development. She also notes that her mother, who worked as an auditor in the aerospace industry, served as an early inspiration and helped shape her interest in compliance and accountability.

Don't be discouraged if one or two of your main pathways in life, or the one or two things that you really want to do, don't work out. Because that is just life re-navigating you to a different path you maybe thought you'd never go down. And it will be 10 times more rewarding, not just from a financial standpoint, but from a mental, emotional, and just overall lifestyle benefit. I learned this myself when I was told at a previous company that they would not allow me to move upward, that I was going to stay exactly where I was at because I was good at what I do and they couldn't afford to lose me. That just put a fire under me to remove myself and start something that I want to do for me.

One of the biggest challenges, I would say, is definitely, as a consultant, getting management, top management, on board with all initiatives. Of course, initiatives come with financial requirements, day-to-day requirements, culture, company culture requirements, and really implementation. And then if we're looking at it from an auditor side, going into these factories and assessing them, it's a struggle with sometimes employees telling you things, or refusing to tell you things, because they're scared of losing their job or getting some type of retaliation, and then with management becoming very aggressive. But I think definitely it takes somebody who is passionate and strong to look past those things and continue on. There's gonna be a lot of bad days, but there's a lot of great days that match that.

Claire values integrity, fairness, accountability, and continuous learning. She is deeply committed to improving the lives of workers in global supply chains and believes that businesses have a responsibility to operate ethically and protect human rights.