Howard Schultz | Be a Seed for Change

Starbucks general counsel retires to work on Obama campaign

Paula Boggs leaving Starbucks.

Seattle Times business reporter

Starbucks general counsel and secretary Paula Boggs will retire April 2 to join President Obama’s re-election campaign. She has been at the coffee company since 2002.

Boggs will be based in Seattle and Santa Fe and work for the campaign in communities across the country.

In 2010, Obama appointed Boggs to the White House Council for Community Solutions, which has worked on community-developed solutions to youth development, education and employment.

Boggs is well-known at Starbucks headquarters for her singing and songwriting. She is a voting member for the Grammy’s and serves on the advisory board for KEXP.

Her legal career began in 1984 when she was a U.S. Army officer assigned to the Pentagon. She was a staff attorney for the White House before leaving the service in 1988, after which she served as assistant U.S. attorney in the Western district of Washington prosecuting fraud and regulatory crimes.

Boggs was a partner at Preston Gates & Ellis in Seattle from 1995 to 1997, working as a trial lawyer specializing in corporate civil litigation.

She was an executive at Dell Computer from 1997 to 2002

STARBUCKS

Paula Boggs

KEVIN P. CASEY / BLOOMBERG, 2010 … Paula Boggs, left, Starbucks general counsel and secretary of Starbucks, left, and Howard Schultz, chief executive officer, make a presentation at the 2010 annual shareholder meeting.

Melissa Allison: 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com. On Twitter @AllisonSeattle.

What’s the point of Starbucks having fair trade coffee if you can’t buy a cup of it?

Starbucks says a lot about supporting small farmers through fair trade. But try buying a cup of brewed fair trade coffee in any American Starbucks and you’re in for some blank looks and a long wait.

Fair trade fights common forms of labor exploitation including human trafficking, child labor, and other abuses. No wonder Starbucks wants to promote the fact that they source coffee from fair trade certified farms. But walk into any Starbucks in the U.S., and it’s likely that you won’t see a fair trade coffee on the menu. Ask for it specifically and you’ll have to wait for a whole new pot to be brewed before you can even get your hands around a cup of it.

Former Starbucks barista Sam Greenblatt has started a petition on Change.org asking Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz to live up to Starbucks’ fair trade ideals by making a fair trade option brewed and available to every customer. Sign Sam’s petition to get a brewed fair trade option available to every American Starbucks customer, everyday.

Fair trade is able to improve the lives of small farmers by connecting them directly to consumers — through labeling that tells consumers where products come from and certifies the fairness of the exchange. Without fair trade, many coffee farmers can only sell their harvests for less than the costs of production, forcing them into a cycle of poverty and debt.

Thanks to the enduring efforts of advocates, 100% of Starbucks’ brewed espresso sold in Europe is Fairtrade Certified. This means every cappuccino, pumpkin spice latte and caramel machiatto is ethically sourced as well as delicious.

It’s time for Starbucks to not just talk the fair trade talk, but walk the walk by making fair trade coffee options easily available in their U.S. stores. Sign Sam’s petition to get a brewed Fair Trade Coffee option available in every American Starbucks, everyday:

http://www.change.org/petitions/ceo-howard-shultz-offer-brewed-fair-trade-coffee-daily-in-us-stores

Thanks for being a change-maker,

Amanda and the Change.org team