Mandated by the General Assembly, the Executive Board (EB) is in charge of:

• assigning the Executive Secretary and the staff forthe Secretariat
• appointing the Principle, Criteria and Verification MechanismDeveloping Group
• electing the President, Vice-Presidents and Treasurer
• developing the statutes and by-laws
• admitting new members.

The members of Executive Board are elected by the General Assembly for a period of one to two years in astaggered system, to secure a continuum.

The first Executive Board was elected in May, 2007 by the General Assembly to represent the three constituencies of the RTRS (Producers, NGOs and Industry, Finance and Trade).  It consists of 15 chosen members, 5 from each constituency.

In April, 2008 during the General Assembly, new EB members were elected; the President and Treasurerwere reconfirmed and some members were reelected.

Jeroen Douglas works for Solidaridad, a Dutch non-profit organisation promoting sustainable supply chains in agriculture. Solidaridad is the initiator of the world's first Fairtrade label (1987) with the introduction of coffee. In the ninetees Jeroen contributed in the expansion of the label to cacao, and tropical fruits. He also developed similar CSR labeling initiatives for cotton and textiles.

Since 2004 Solidaridad got involved into soybeans. After that, his workfield expanded to palmoil and sugarcane from a food, feed and fuel perspective. Jeroen is also a member of the Supervisory Board of the Better Sugarcane Initiative.

Guillermo Terol. Desarrollo Agrícola del Paraguay, Paraguay

Carlo Lovatelli. Abiove, Brazil

Cassio Franco. WWF, Brazil.

Christopher Wells Franco. Banco Real, Brazil.