Claire Petrovich
Claire Petrovich is a Certified Social Compliance Auditor (CSCA) and ESG consultant with over eight years of experience in human resources, health and safety, and overall social compliance and responsible sourcing. For the past three years, she has focused specifically on various company social compliance programs, helping organizations strengthen their responsible sourcing practices and operational compliance. Claire began her career in the beauty and personal care industry, working in supply chain and business development, but quickly discovered a passion for operations and making a broader impact on working conditions and employee welfare across multiple sectors. In her current role as owner and advisor for CP Consultants LLC, Claire works closely with brands and suppliers alike to ensure compliance with human rights and labor standards, particularly in manufacturing environments. Her work ranges from corrective action planning—such as reimbursing recruiting fees to migrant workers, or allocating finances for health and safety improvements—to providing guidance and serving as a listening ear for both employees and management. She develops policies, delivers training on human resources, ethics, sustainability, and health and safety, and helps interpret local and federal labor laws to advocate for employees and create safer, more equitable workplaces. Claire’s career also includes senior auditing and team lead roles with DNV, UL, and Intertek, where she led audits and trained new auditors on social compliance frameworks such as Responsible Business Alliance (RBA), SEDEX's SMETA, and Client Code of Conduct audits. Certified to evaluate labor, ethics, and environmental management systems, she ensures that organizations operate responsibly and ethically while enhancing employee engagement. Combining technical expertise with practical operational insight, Claire enables companies to improve social responsibility programs, strengthen compliance structures, and achieve sustainable, responsible growth.
• Lead Auditor (Labor, Ethics, EHS)
• Certified Social Compliance Auditor (CSCA)
• CERTIFIED CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY LEAD AUDITOR
• ISO 9001:2015 Lead Auditor Training
• FIDM - Degree, Beauty Merchandising and Marketing
• Association of Professional Social Compliance Auditors
• APSCA
• Grapevine Community
• RAIN
What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to allowing myself to be a teacher and a student in both my auditing and consulting positions. Where I can teach my clients in one aspect, I allow them to teach me in another. 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 for a certain level of understanding and humility to work forward together, versus making my clients feel belittled. This approach has been key to building trust and creating collaborative partnerships where we can actually move forward and make meaningful impact.
What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
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 works as an auditor in the aerospace industry, served as an early inspiration and helped shape her interest in compliance and accountability.
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Don't be discouraged if what you think today is your only pathways in life, or the thing that you really want to do, doesn'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 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 wanted to do for me.
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest challenges, I would say, is definitely as a consultant, getting all levels of management on board with all initiatives. Of course, sometimes these initiatives come with financial requirements, day-to-day commitment like paperwork, procedure enforcement, and really implementation. And then if we're looking at it from an auditor side, where I'm going into these factories and assessing them, it's a struggle with based on some of the things employees tell you in confidence, or refuse to tell you, because they're scared of losing their job or getting some type of retaliation where management may become very aggressive. As auditors we are expected to deliver results objectively, but that doesn't always translate to the facility we're at and we can be on the receiving end of not so nice words or actions. But I think definitely it takes somebody who is passionate and strong to look past those things and continue on. There's going to be a lot of bad days, but there are a lot of great days that match.
What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
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. At the core of all things are used, consumed, or even cooked with - is a person, sometimes a vulnerable person, who made it possible to have and it is the social duty and obligation as social compliance professionals to identify and protect these workers.