Our guest for this episode believes that businesses can contribute to human rights and that human rights can be conducive to business. Barbara Linder focused most of her career on human rights and business. She currently works as a Senior Environmental and Social Manager for the Austrian Development Bank (OeEB), which is a private stock company with a public mandate.

Through her work, she strengthens human rights aspects in environmental and social management processes, policy development, risk assessments and capacity building regarding human rights. When you work on human rights in the private sector, you have to change your perspective, meet people where they are and present the information related to human rights in a more digestible way.

Her advice if you want to work on human rights in the private sector:

• Study the corporate culture. What is a no-go, for what do you get points? What is the currency (e.g. knowledge)?
• Look at your own conditioning (e.g. beliefs, expectations) that you have acquired through your educational and social background. Try to take an observer position and to understand the system and its actors without judging. You are also playing a role in the system.
• Build fruitful networks with likeminded people that share your values.
• Train patience and resilience and take breaks. You can only plant seeds. They will grow when the timing is right, you cannot determine that- but every seed is valuable.