Christina Archer

Christina joined The Body Shop in 2007. As a Senior Buyer she is responsible for managing the relationships with producer groups in Latin America, Italy and Samoa who supply the Body Shop with quality ingredients though it’s exclusive and unique Community Fair-trade programme.

Christina directly works with communities and producer groups in Brazil, Peru, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Ecuador, Italy and Samoa. Over the past 5 years she has travelled to meet the sesame oil producers of Nicaragua (on horseback!) to see first-hand how the sesame oil we use is made, learned how to taste good quality olive oil in Italy, worked with a local non-governmental organisation in Guatemala to carry out a community assessment to inform what projects can be funded by the premium fund paid by The Body Shop to the aloe producing communities, and has waded through knee-deep mud in Ecuador to visit organic sugar farms and taste organic alcohol.

Christina says: ‘Although I have travelled so much over the last 20 years, I still find the interaction with communities in the countries I visit, like Ecuador and Nicaragua, to be so inspiring and educational, despite the sometimes arduous journey to get to them! I also love hearing the farmers tell me how trading with The Body Shop has brought so many visible benefits to them and their families. Some of the villages we trade with are in truly hard to get to places, so getting in, or bringing ingredients out, is not easy, which makes having an international organisation like The Body Shop as a stable client so vitally important to these groups.’

Originally from Greece, Christina studied Economics and Management studies at Leeds University in the UK, and went on to spend 15 years working in the overseas development sector in Asia and Latin America before joining The Body Shop. During that time she managed a rural development programme in the Peruvian Andes for 3 years, worked in Cuba for 2 years with Save the Children, trained to be a livelihoods adviser, was part of Save the Children’s South Asia programme management team for 5 years, including working on the Tsunami response.