Lea Esterhuizen

Founder and CEO
lea@andwider.com
Joined &Wider in: 2014
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Secret Talent: high-speed painting (canvas), and collaborative painting (on anything - why not?)
Favourite Song: Tom Waits - Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night

Lea is moved by hidden injustice, and the opportunity to do something about it. Her career as a data scientist and methodologist has always been driven by it: to provide insight that powers action for those whose suffering or exploitation were previously invisible. She believes that once the lights are turned on, companies, organizations and even states are more likely to act. She believes addressing injustice makes societies, supply chains and organizations stronger. 

Lea spent 23 years focused on state-sponsored violence, genocide, forced labour and violence affecting children, in South Africa, Bosnia, the MENA Region and the UK. In these settings, she researched a PhD, and designed scalable early warning systems to detect urgencies and drive swift action where it is needed most. She reminisces happily about experiences working with civil society actors in the MENA region, and the Balkans, and in Sudan and the UK, with whom she had the pleasure of working. 

Consequently she loves working in diverse teams, in an international environment, with the agility to drive scalable innovation. Switching the lights on when it comes to human rights impacts across entire sourcing landscapes, and ultimately, across the globe is what drives her. 

In 2012 there was a tragedy on a platinum mine called Marikana, and the media reporting caught Lea’s attention. In the 18 months that followed, with two newborn boys in arms, Lea educated herself on the extent and nature of invisibility into working conditions along supply chains. And 2 years later, &Wider was “born”. 

Lea’s ability to take complex social dynamics and design systems to gather and share insight at scale, is what sets her work apart. She is strong on taking complex problems and designing elegant data-first solutions. With the coming of age of AI models, she has become excited at the opportunity to use primary data - the data that &Wider has accumulated across 12 sectors and 68 geographies - to validate and teach AI algorithms to enrich, and predict human rights risks in any sector or geography. 

Lea is fluent in 2 languages, “kind-of” competent in two more, with degrees from the University of Cape Town, University of Stellenbosch, and a PhD from the University of London.  Her happy place? She finds it tricky to pick one, so here goes: wandering through the dunes with a friend, reading by a fire, dancing in the kitchen (jazz, rock, hip-hop, pop…the good kind) or snowboarding (while it lasts!). Oh yes, and she can stand comfortably on her head for a good few minutes, when needed.