The Leather Working Group (LWG), the leather industry’s most widely recognised environmental audit and certification body, has appointed Dr Christina Raab as its new Chief Executive Officer, effective 2 November 2026. The move lands at a pivotal moment: LWG is preparing to roll out a completely new Sustainability System next year, and the search for its next leader has produced a candidate whose entire career has been built at the intersection of materials science, circularity and supply-chain transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Raab will succeed Vanessa Podmore, LWG’s outgoing Executive Director, who is expected to step down at the end of the year. To avoid a leadership vacuum, Raab will work alongside Podmore and Interim Director Adam Hughes during a handover period designed to preserve continuity and keep LWG’s protocols, membership services and audit pipeline running smoothly. It is a deliberate, sober approach from a standard-setting organisation that the global leather value chain now relies on for traceability and environmental credibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What makes the appointment notable is the specificity of Raab’s background. Most recently she served as President and CEO of the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, where she championed the adoption of safe, circular and responsible products and materials \u2014 exactly the language the leather sector has been forced to learn as regulators and brands tighten their expectations around chemistry, waste and transparency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before that, she led global implementation and market transformation at ZDHC (Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals), an initiative that has become central to how the textile, leather and footwear industries manage chemical restrictions across thousands of suppliers. In earlier roles she held leadership positions at sustainability advisory firms, helping companies in different sectors and regions embed sustainability into strategy and operations rather than treating it as a reporting footnote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That combination \u2014 a scientist by training, a standards-builder by instinct, and a coalition-leader by experience \u2014 is precisely the profile LWG’s Board Chair David Wright pointed to when announcing the hire. “Dr Raab is a highly respected leader in sustainability and innovation,” Wright said, “she brings a strong track record of shaping industry standards, building influential global partnerships and leading mission-driven organisations through growth and transformation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For tanners, brands and manufacturers, LWG is not a fringe organisation. Its audit protocol is the de facto global benchmark for environmental performance in leather manufacturing, and its ratings increasingly determine whether a supplier can stay on a brand’s approved list. As due-diligence regulation spreads in the EU and beyond, and as footwear and fashion brands face scrutiny over deforestation and chemical footprints, the credibility and reach of LWG’s standards carry real commercial weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Raab signalled both continuity and ambition in her first comments. She said she has long admired LWG’s “scientific rigour, technical expertise and global community’s commitment to advancing a more responsible leather industry,” and added that she looks forward “to leading LWG in delivering lasting value for its members and to working collaboratively across the wider LWG ecosystem to build a more resilient and sustainable future for the industry.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The timing is the headline. LWG is preparing to launch its new Sustainability System in 2027, building on recent membership growth, broader adoption of its protocols, and deeper collaboration across the global leather value chain \u2014 from slaughterhouses and tanneries through to brands and retailers. A new CEO installing a new system is a rare window for the organisation to sharpen how it measures environmental performance, tighten alignment with emerging regulation, and respond to the criticism that voluntary certification alone cannot deliver the sector’s climate and nature targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Raab’s arrival also reflects a broader shift in who leads sustainability institutions: the people now at the helm increasingly come from implementation roles \u2014 the messy work of changing factories and supply chains \u2014 rather than from pure advocacy. That pragmatic pedigree will be tested quickly, because the 2027 system will have to satisfy sceptics on all sides: brands wanting simpler compliance, tanners wanting fair and affordable audits, and campaigners wanting genuine environmental progress rather than paperwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For an industry under persistent pressure to prove its license to operate, LWG’s leadership change is more than a personnel story. It is a signal that the body holding the leather sector’s environmental credentials is doubling down on rigour, circularity and global partnership \u2014 and betting that a stronger standard, delivered by a proven operator, is the best answer to a skeptical market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Source: Leather News (leathernews.org)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" LWG appoints Dr Christina Raab as CEO effective 2 November 2026, preparing a new Sustainability System for 2027 to drive the global circular leather standards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_georankopt_ai_score":56,"_georankopt_ai_analysis":null,"_georankopt_ai_recommendations":null,"_georankopt_focus_keyword":"","_georankopt_ai_last_analysis":"2026-10-28 08:12:46","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1781,671,1784,8,241,1782,1783],"class_list":["post-3109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news","tag-christina-raab","tag-circular-leather","tag-leather-certification","tag-leather-sustainability","tag-leather-working-group","tag-lwg-ceo","tag-sustainability-system-2027"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}