On this episode of Culture & Compliance Chronicles, Amanda Raad and Nitish Upadhyaya from Ropes & Gray's Insights Lab, and Richard Bistrong of Front-Line Anti-Bribery speak with Archana Kotecha, CEO of The Remedy Project, about her journey from corporate law to leading human rights initiatives across Asia. Archana shares practical insights on assessing workplace culture, supporting women and migrant workers, and building trust between businesses and NGOs. The conversation explores the challenges of conducting human rights impact assessments, the importance of direct worker engagement, and the role of pilots and feedback in compliance programs. Whether you are a compliance professional, legal advisor, or business leader, this episode offers valuable lessons on aligning purpose with practice, amplifying unheard voices, and finding common ground to create lasting impact. Tune in to explore how culture shapes compliance—and how new perspectives can help your organization to shape solutions to challenges.
Transcript
At a glance: Click the links below to advance directly to the corresponding sections of the transcript:
- [1:15] Getting to Know Archana
- [6:30] Tools for Assessing Culture
- [10:50] Engaging with Stakeholders
- [13:20] Diving into The Supply Chain
- [19:10] Bringing Stakeholders Together
- [22:30] Using Pilots
- [26:00] Key Takeaways
Nitish Upadhyaya: Welcome back to the Culture & Compliance Chronicles, the podcast that gives you new perspectives on legal, compliance and regulatory challenges faced by organizations and individuals worldwide. The clue is in the title—culture is at the heart of everything. It's the endlessly shifting patterns that govern our environment and behaviors. The magic is in amplifying certain patterns and dampening others. Let's see if we can pique your curiosity, get you to challenge some of your perceptions and give you space to think differently about some of your own challenges. I'm Nitish Upadhyaya, and I'm joined by Amanda Raad and Richard Bistrong. Hello, Amanda and Richard.
Amanda Raad: Hello. Good to see you.
Richard Bistrong: Nitish and Amanda, it's great to join you today. That was such an interesting episode with Guido Palazzo talking about his co-authored book, The Dark Pattern, where he took us through what he called "corporate hellscapes" but was nice enough to return us to the light pattern. Nitish, with that said, who do we have joining us today?
Nitish Upadhyaya: Delighted to welcome Archana Kotecha, CEO of The Remedy Project.
Archana Kotecha: Thanks for having me on this podcast, Nitish.
[1:15] Getting to Know Archana
Nitish Upadhyaya: I've had the absolute pleasure of working with you on a really fascinating project mapping safety of women in industry and agriculture roles across Asia. I've been so inspired by the passion for what you do and your desire to push boundaries, and so, I couldn't wait to have you on this podcast, and I'm really glad we're here. Just recently, we were talking about a research method that you'd read about, eliciting honest opinions to sensitive questions, and these sorts of conversations where you're continually pushing the boundaries and searching for new ways of doing things, I'm hoping that will come across to our listeners in a very different cultural context to what they might be used to. Now, we always help our audience get to know you a little bit better before we dive into the detail and your experience. Let's do a rapid-fire round—give us three things we should know about you.
Archana Kotecha: I'm originally from Mauritius. I am an avid weightlifter and a fitness freak. And I'm the proud mum of two teenagers.
Nitish Upadhyaya: Very snappy. Now, what's one thing you're curious about?
Archana Kotecha: I think one thing I'm really curious about is whether worker-driven social responsibility can really take off in Asia. There are examples of it in different parts of the world, but the context and the rule of law, the setup is very different—Asia has its own particularities. And I've always been very curious to know whether empowered and supported workers within the right context could also make it in Asia.
Nitish Upadhyaya: Let's see if we can touch on that during the course of this recording. What's the last thing that surprised you?
Archana Kotecha: One of the things that always amazes me is how our children get taught the curriculum at school: very carefully and very diligently by their teachers and by school. But actually, they don't really get taught many skills that are so vital for later in life. For me, one of the key skills that they need to be taught is resilience. My daughter surprised me by demonstrating really good resilience in the face of rejection recently. And I think this is something that is surprising in this day and age, particularly where everybody is instantly gratified or feels instantly entitled to get what they want. So, that was a pleasant surprise.
Nitish Upadhyaya: Let's get to understand your career path, because all of the points you talked about around social responsibility, working across it in Asia, what brought you to where you are now?
Archana Kotecha: I started out my career as a corporate lawyer. I qualified as a barrister in the U.K., lived the high life, did M&A work, worked the hours, had the training, and had the benefit of working in Big Law for a number of years. I was still looking for something, I didn't quite find it, and was very grateful for everything I had learned in Big Law, and decided to start looking elsewhere, and very accidentally stumbled into an opportunity at the UNHCR doing refugee work. That's the first time I found lawyering with purpose and for a purpose—I could use my skills, and knowledge, and expertise to touch the lives of people. And that was almost over 18 years ago. Subsequent to doing refugee work, I had a chance encounter with a victim of human trafficking in London, and that changed the course of my career. I decided from that point onward, I wanted to focus on human trafficking and forced labor. I came to Asia about 17 years ago and had an opportunity to be part of an NGO startup and to work on counter-trafficking across the region. So, very quickly, I became a go-to person for governments in the region, prosecutors, judges, worker groups, CSOs in relation to forced labor and human trafficking.
Five years ago, I decided that I wanted to take my work to another level. One of the issues of being with an NGO platform is your ability to reach and interact with businesses can be very limited. There are inherent trust issues and various gaps between these two stakeholders. So, I set up on my own—I set up The Remedy Project. The idea was really to try and reach as many workers in global supply chains by working with businesses and essentially to leave the world in a better place than I found it. At The Remedy Project, we basically do human rights risk assessments, human rights impact assessments. We create tools for businesses so that they can better understand their footprint on human rights issues of their stakeholders. And we pay particular attention to migrant workers, to women, and to children. For us, it is really important to be partnering and co-creating with businesses while maintaining that human rights lens. We are not about designing and giving it to the business, but rather, working with business, understanding their challenges, the opportunities to scale, and creating real pathways and inroads into the way business understands risk, responds to it, and prevents it rather than constantly reacting to risk.
[6:30] Tools for Assessing Culture
Amanda Raad: I love that, especially the point about partnering with the business, I think, is such an important point. Digging in a little bit, how do you go about thinking about assessing culture at a manufacturing site, for example? How do you approach that?
Archana Kotecha: We do a lot of investigations or human rights impact assessments where we go to visit farms, we visit factories and various sites. I think one of the things that I always insist on—and electronics companies get very nervous about allowing this—is a visit to the production floor, because I want to be able to experience what the temperature is like on the floor. I want to be able to see how workers are interacting with each other. Do they look at ease? Do they look nervous? Do they look stressed? And just ask them, "Are you able to go to the bathroom when you need to? Are there enough bathrooms on the facilities? What sort of facilities are there for workers? Is there a canteen where people can sit and eat?" Another thing that's quite interesting is knowing whether the canteen provides food only for the workers while management have a separate canteen. That's also telling in some cases, and you can see the differences in the quality of both. Where are workers sitting to eat? If it's under corrugated sheets of iron that are attracting sun at midday and it's uncomfortably hot, that's also very telling.
We talk to workers. We do focus group discussions. We ask them about how they feel about their workplace. We do one-on-one interviews as well. Before we go in, we also look at audit reports. We look at what sort of grievances workers might have reported, so we have a fairly good idea of where to direct some of our inquiries and questions. We look at how signage is for workers within the factory. Are grievance mechanisms well advertised? Would people know where to go? Is it in a language that they would understand? And the management interviews also give us a real sense of: What is management's vision for the workforce?" How do they feel about their workforce? Are they contributors to the factory who are recognized as contributors, or are they just there doing their job, and they're supposed to be there because we pay them to be there"?
Worker welfare committees are also very telling. How clean the production floor is. And more recently, we've been very, very attentive to the needs of women in particular. You have women in their 40s, in their 50s who might be going through menopause, who experience hot flashes, and when the factory floor is hot, it is so difficult for these women to stand there—let's say they're at the ironing station the whole day—and do that job. So, all those are really important things, and they give you a real sense of how workers feel about their workplace, what the culture is, how they're treated. Do they have freedom of association? Are they able to air grievances? If not, why not? Do they feel threatened? We also look at how workers interact with each other. In many large factories, it's very common to see a large population of internal migrant workers, but also, maybe foreign migrant workers. You might also have a lot of contract workers who are basically there for two months, three months, six months depending on production needs, and full-time workers. They both have different entitlements and different packages. It's also important to see how they interact with each other. How do they feel about each other? How do they feel about management? And do they feel valued in the workplace? All of those are really interesting.
One of the projects we've been working on with Ropes & Gray, and with Nitish and his team in particular, are these surveys called She Voices. The idea is really to have women share what they feel about their workplace. And it's so important to have that, because actually in many places, women become silent and passive participants in the workplace. They're not seen, and they're not heard. That's also something we look out for. What sort of channels do you have to really tap into the female workforce and understand their needs?
[10:50] Engaging with Stakeholders
Amanda Raad: It's so important that you started there, right at the beginning, about how important it is to actually get on the site, see for yourself, and start to ask questions directly. How much of a struggle is it to actually get the access that you feel like you need? Practically speaking, how does that go? Are there tools that you've used to be able to get people to be more willing to engage in this process in a productive manner?
Archana Kotecha: We don't get access unless a brand gets involved and says to the supplier, "You need to allow them on field because there is a nonconformance, and we want them to investigate this independently." But I've found, even when suppliers are very reluctant, the success of my mission relies on how collaborative they're going to be when I get there. So, the first thing I do is to spend time with the supplier management so that they understand fully that I'm not here to find problems—I'm here to find a solution, and we're going to find it together. I'll sit, and I'll spend the time it takes with them first to get them on board and on-site for them to understand fully, "What is my role? What am I trying to do here? And what is the overall objective?" Then, we'll move from there. And when we end the process, we will do a closing meeting. At the closing meeting, I will always remember to thank them for their time, but also, to share with them some of our thinking, and that will include both positives and perhaps areas for growth. It's so important to be constructive and not finger-pointing.
Now, there have been occasions where suppliers have simply said, especially when the brand doesn't have much leverage, "We're not going to give you access." In those cases, I've requested whether I can have a call with the supplier, and part of that call is making them feel at ease with who this third party is, what the role of the third party is, and why this visit is necessary. And usually we will draw on regulations, we will draw on reputational risk, we will draw on the importance for their other brands that might be also sourcing from them and how they could be a lot more competitive in the market if they allowed us to go ahead with the visit. It really is massaging at both ends and really trying to be as constructive and bringing people together as possible. So, again, it's that idea of co-owning the process.
[13:20] Diving into The Supply Chain
Richard Bistrong: When you're working with your business partners, how deep do you go into the levels of the supply chain? I was thinking about your sharing, "How clean is the factory? How clean is the manufacturing operation?" Would you then go and say, "We'd like to talk to the people that are responsible for maintenance of this factory and to see what those conditions are like," or, "The people that you've subcontracted to operate your canteen, we want to also look at those working conditions"? So, it seems to be this common debate and frequent debate in our compliance field, how far down the supply chain levels should we go? What would be your specific advice, let's say with your business partners and for those elsewhere, how should they look at this issue?
Archana Kotecha: I think in relation to this, if I'm doing a site visit, I will go into the canteen, and I will see what's happening there. I will go talk to the maintenance guy. I'll talk to the electrician. I'll speak to the security guard at the gate. I'll speak to the workers on the floor. Because at the end of the day, if anything happens to any one of these people, it is a reputational, a legal, and a financial issue for the brand—it doesn't matter what function they're in. So, for me, you can't do a good job from a risk assessment perspective unless you're really looking at everything that's on-site. It gets a lot more complicated when you start going to Tier N, which is raw materials sourcing, etc. That's another layer of complexity, and that's where we often lose business partners, because right now, the way regulations are, there's a lot of legal uncertainty, there's a lot of blocks. Unless they are clearly aware of something going on in the raw materials supply chain, it's very rare for them to want to go beyond and to look there, particularly as there's often multiple layers in between the supplier and the raw materials sourcing process. If it's electronics, there may be layers of smelters, brokers, etc., in between, and the distance created means that there is almost that, I'll say "safety" within air quotes, between the supplier, the brand, and those parties where there are higher risks.
However, we've seen in the case of many high-profile American businesses, for example, that that does not stop lawsuits being filed in relation to risks that arise in the raw materials supply chain. But if I was advising a client, I would definitely say to them, "If you're subcontracting your security services, your janitorial services, or your canteen services, you need to have a good understanding of what those contracts look like and whether there might be any risks sitting there." So, those are the documents that we request to see even before we get to the site. And in an ideal world, we get access to those documents. In a not-so-ideal world, we may get access to those documents but only when we are on-site, and that's okay, too.
Richard Bistrong: Just out of curiosity, when you take on a business partner in your work—and I'm thinking about some of the collective action NGOs that are out there—is there a least common denominator where if your business partner isn't willing to commit to certain things, that you're not going to take them on because it could just be window dressing as opposed to looking for real change?
Archana Kotecha: This is our fifth year as a social enterprise, and we have a select group of private sector clients, large clients, who have been repeat clients from the time we set up. The reason why I love working with them is I know them really well. I know what they can do. I know where their limitations are. And I understand the dynamics between legal and compliance, procurement, and the sustainability team. So, it makes for a much more productive relationship. And I know those people are committed to doing right. We don't always get everything through that we want to, but we're able to have difficult conversations. We're able to take and implement some recommendations while others remain work in progress, but such is life. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't work with them because they can't do everything we want at the same time. I think I learned from my NGO days that wanting the absolute position is very often not achievable and not possible, but that still means we can continue to make those steps toward progress. The way I choose to see it, and I think clients particularly appreciate this, is this is a journey that we take together. There are milestones along the journey, but we remain less attached to the outcomes so that the process itself is rich, and that in itself is worth so much.
I have had situations where clients have asked me, for example, to change my findings in relation to a report. They say, "Our legal team doesn't like the use of this word. Our legal team doesn't like that. They don't like this. They don't like that." Now, there's an extent to which I'm willing to accommodate language and semantics as long as we don't alter the core meaning and the recommendations that are attached to it. I think the beauty of being independent and the beauty of not being driven by profit, but rather by purpose, is that I'm quite happy to step away and walk away from something where I have to compromise the vision of the organization or its values.
[19:10] Bringing Stakeholders Together
Nitish Upadhyaya: You spend so much time bringing lots of these stakeholders together. You talked about the brands, you talked about the suppliers, and you talked about the people on the ground as well, and, of course, you're an accredited mediator as well. Do you have any lessons for our audience on how to facilitate conversations to bring about alignment or understanding of these different perspectives to actually allow people to then move forward?
Archana Kotecha: I think, for me, a lot of this is leading with commonalities in agenda. I think we do tend to be very hyper-focused on differences, on divergences, on perspectives and positions, but actually, if we leave those aside, there's always commonalities in agenda. For me, finding that is really important to understanding what makes them tick. What would they be happy to see? Actually, I find the other party is not so dissimilar—they're just looking at it from a different perspective. So, I think first leading with commonalities in the agenda. The second thing is demonstrating good listening skills, understanding, and having an open mindset to receive. It might be something you're not really prepared or happy to receive, but actually being willing to receive it, to think about it, and to process it. You don't have to react to it—you can respond to it. I think that's really important.
There are different cultures. For example, child labor. In an Asian community, it's very acceptable for a family that has a farm to have the child be helping out at the farm. The perception from different parts of the world where children do not work but they go to school, they stay in school, and they come home, and they relax—they have a different life. There isn't some one perspective that is right and one that is wrong—they're different perspectives that work for different communities in different parts of the world coming from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and therefore, that nuance is really important. I think we forget very often, in a bid to get what we want, that we're all human—we're very different. The human condition is complex, and it's sometimes just really difficult to arrive at one strand that represents everybody or one thing that everybody has in common. But actually, that thing is there—it's just nuanced, and it looks and feels different in different parts of the world. I think being open to that is critical, and finding opportunities to align rather than constantly focusing on where there are gaps—and where there are gaps, being constructive about it. "I hear you. I hear that this is an issue in your country. Here's how we think about this issue. How do you feel about that?" We don't have conversations like that very often, where you're putting something on the table, you're asking people how they feel about it. It's about finding solutions together. I do find that where you try to impose a view, a solution, or a perspective, you are less likely to evolve to a solution that is acceptable and something that can be implemented and be successful.
[22:30] Using Pilots
Amanda Raad: The finding the solutions together, I think even if you try that with the very best intent, sometimes it's hard to know what the right solution is. So, you're hearing a bunch of different perspectives, and you try to come together with what the right proposed change is, or how to try to move along a particular remediation, for example. Have you found any use in pilots or smaller interventions? And how does that work for you in the context of bringing people along together?
Archana Kotecha: Being a female founder in a sector where there isn't ever any money available or resources for self-development, I'm an avid devourer of podcasts and anything that helps me do some self-development as a leader and as a female leader. One of the things I learned was that if you're building a tool or you're building a product, quit procrastinating over building the perfect thing. Have something that you can pilot, and then just keep refining it till it gets really good. So, pilots, for me, are an absolutely critical way of learning and tweaking so that the product can be created to fit the needs and the purpose of the people it's designed to serve rather than being something that I think is the right thing to serve people. I just get something that is good enough out so that we're constantly playing and learning.
For example, She Voices, we've got four pilots that have gotten underway. There have been lots of lessons learned, including how some questions are very difficult to translate. Women find it very hard, depending on levels of literacy, around imagining or eliciting the right responses or a response that we hope will help us get an insight into how they're thinking, because the image that they're looking at is too abstract, and they respond better to concrete images and the image of an object, for example. We would never know that unless we went out and we tried, we tested, we spoke to women, we spoke to those who are working with these women, those who are administering the pilots, etc. And I think, for me, a pilot also offers the opportunity to eliminate contextual externalities that can actually hamper launching a product at scale. So, there are so many particularities, and the particularities of each pilot allow you to really learn so that if you are creating a product that you want to be deployed at scale, you can really eliminate those externalities that might stop deployment from being effective. So, it really is a critical, critical part of not just creating products but also co-owning and co-creating products.
Amanda Raad: I love it so much because I think it also plays into normalizing or making it easier to welcome feedback, because you almost go in from the very beginning not looking for perfection—which I'm guilty of often, and you can get paralyzed—but seeking out that input to know what the next right thing is, so taking a step and making it easier to get more feedback, and to take away a negative attribution to whatever that feedback might be but see it really as a positive.
[26:00] Key Takeaways
Nitish Upadhyaya: Lots of useful wisdom and tips, I think, coming out of this from talking about pilots to bringing stakeholders together, and talking about how you even go about assessing something as amorphous as culture in a manufacturing site. Richard, what's your key takeaway from this?
Richard Bistrong: I think I have an appreciation that name-and-shame doesn't spark social change or corporate change. And the whole concept—and we've seen this before, Archana—of being a good listener and to try to understand cultural nuances, see where there can be alignment so that you're better able to then say, "Let's also take a look at the gaps." It's not just about everything that's wrong. And all of that ends up, as you shared, to how we find solutions. So, being a good listener, understanding where those gaps are to find those solutions, I think, is just great global counsel, and thank you for being so open in sharing it.
Nitish Upadhyaya: And what about you, Amanda?
Amanda Raad: You had me hooked at the very beginning when you talked about your journey and lawyering with purpose. I've been thinking a lot about the purpose and the meaning in all that we do, and I think there's so much. I think all of us can really dig into that, because if we do our jobs the best we can, we are really interacting with people on a daily basis on issues that are just hugely important in the world. The approach that you talked about from start to finish really highlights how if we're aware and sensitive to what our purpose and our goals are, and work with each other, and are open to change, there's a lot we can accomplish together. So, I loved it—it was a really great discussion. Thank you very much.
Nitish Upadhyaya: Archana, if you had one key area that listeners should take away or that you wish for them to explore further, what would it be?
Archana Kotecha: Thanks, Nitish. I think over the years, I learned that my skill was the ability to do storytelling. I think as human beings, we fundamentally respond so well to stories. When we are babies, parents tell you stories. Sometimes you can't go to sleep without stories. It gives you a sense of security, a sense of enchantment, being taken to another world. It's no different in the work that we do. A lot of what I do is to take stories from the ground and translate those stories and those needs into businesses so that I can get them to respond to those stories by creating new narratives and new stories. A lot of this is about human connection, and I find that sometimes we're so busy doing our role, our jobs in our little silos, collecting data, we forget why we're collecting data. Data has to be actionable, it has to tell a story, and it has to be responsive to the needs of the business, but also, of those featuring in those stories. So, for me, over the years, it has been, "How can I perfect that skill so I can really bring the plight, the experiences of workers in a manner that is the most constructive so as to get decision-makers to move the needle?" For me, that's what it's about—that's what life is about. It's about connecting, it's about connecting for the better, and it's about connecting for change.
Nitish Upadhyaya: What an inspirational way to finish the episode. Thank you so much for sharing your story and for encouraging everyone else to think about theirs, but also, the stories that their colleagues, the stakeholders, and others have on the ground. So, I'm looking forward to feedback, seeing what people do off the back of this episode in their own stories, in their compliance functions as they think about risk, and maybe giving a voice to folks that don't often get to be heard. Thank you so much, Archana, for all your ideas and thoughts, and we're really looking forward to hearing more from you in the coming months.
Archana Kotecha: Absolutely. And thank you for the partnership with Ropes & Gray. I'm so grateful for this, and I'm excited to see where we go with this partnership.
Nitish Upadhyaya: Thank you all for tuning in to the latest episode in our Culture & Compliance Chronicles series. For more information about our series and any of the ideas discussed today, take a look at the links in our show notes. You can also subscribe to the series wherever you regularly listen to podcasts, including on Apple and Spotify. Amanda, Richard and I will be back very soon for our next chapter. If you have topics you'd like us to cover or novel perspectives you want everyone else to hear about, get in touch. Thanks again for listening. Have a wonderful day and stay curious.
Show Notes:
- The Remedy Project
- Archana Kotecha, The Remedy Project
- Archana Kotecha, LinkedIn
- "The Bitter Price of Sweetness: Why Traditional Approaches Fail to Address Forced Labour in India's Sugarcane Fields," The Remedy Project (June 2025)
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