Chris Wille

Chris Wille is the chief of the Rainforest Alliance's Sustainable Agriculture Program. The Rainforest Alliance is a nonprofit, New York-based environmental NGO.
Chris Wille currently lives and works in Costa Rica, from where he has led the development of the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN). The SAN is a group of NGOs in Developing countries that developed a number of certification standards for tropical crops like coffee, bananas, citrus, tea, cocoa.
Career
Wille was trained as a wildlife biologist and journalist. His journalistic experience includes the creation of an award-winning television program on the outdoors for the Department of Wildlife Conservation of the US state of Oklahoma. Wille was an editor with the National Wildlife Federation in Washington, DC and a vice-president at the National Audubon Society in New York. He also spent some time working for the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Guam Department of Wildlife Conservation. For the latter he developed environmental education and public outreach programs and participated in marine and ornithological research projects.
Wille moved to Costa Rica in 1990, where he initially worked for Rainforest Alliance Neotropics Communications program. He later became the head of the NGO's Sustainable Agriculture division, and worked on development of the Sustainable Agriculture Network.
In 2008 Wille was one of ten people named as Ethical Leader of 2008 by Ethical Corporation Magazine for 'helping to take ethical food and drink into the mainstream market' . According to the organization, he has been instrumental in bringing certification and sustainable agriculture practices to over 34,000 farms in 22 countries. Wille has helped companies like Chiquita, Unilever, Kraft and McDonald's to source from sustainable farms, helping to create widespread demand for responsibly produced goods.

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