Liz Hershfield, executive director of COTTON USA, argues that global leadership requires stepping away from the desk and into the field to understand the human cost of corporate decisions.
For nearly three decades, Liz Hershfield has lived out of a suitcase. As the executive director of COTTON USA and co-director of the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol, she spends 200 days a year moving through a global network of farms, gins, mills, factories, and brand headquarters.
It is a journey that reveals a stark truth about the modern economy: a single garment is a traveler. crossing borders and cultures long before it ever lands in a closet. When a decision is made at a corporate desk. it doesn’t just update a spreadsheet; it ripples through a chain of people thousands of miles away.
Hershfield recalls her first trip to a cotton farm, a moment that shattered her internalized assumptions about the industry. She realized then that expertise is often a mirage if it’s formed from a distance. To lead in a global market. she argues. is to accept that the world rarely functions the way a headquarters’ manual says it should.
The reality of the supply chain is fragmented. A grower watches the weather; a manufacturer manages labor; a brand executive monitors the consumer. These perspectives are all true at once, yet they are rarely aligned. Hershfield notes that the most effective leaders avoid entering these rooms with all the answers. Instead. they ask the second and third questions. pushing past the surface-level presentation to understand the local rhythm of trust and decision-making.
This proximity creates a specific kind of perspective that cannot be replicated through digital reports or email chains. Early in her career. budget cuts pushed companies to limit travel to production teams. leaving merchants and buyers at the office. Hershfield observed that this shift created a disconnect. It is easy to demand a last-minute change when staring at a monitor. but the decision feels different when you are standing on a factory floor. witnessing the physical impact of a canceled order on the workers whose livelihoods depend on it.
When she later gained control over budgets. she made a deliberate choice: she mandated that merchants and buyers travel alongside their production colleagues. The results were immediate. Those who saw the reality of the supply chain firsthand began making better-informed choices. weighing short-term gains against the long-term risks to the people on the other side of the transaction.
In an era where sustainability priorities and consumer expectations are in constant flux, the disconnect between policy and practice remains a persistent threat. Trends on a chart may show that something is changing, but they never show why that change matters more in one location than another.
Ultimately, Hershfield sees these relationships not as transactional, but as the primary infrastructure of the industry. Because no single entity controls the journey from seed to shelf. success relies on people who do not report to each other finding a reason to trust. That trust is rarely built in a boardroom. It is built by showing up—repeatedly. in person. with the singular agenda of understanding how the rest of the world works.
Liz Hershfield COTTON USA supply chain leadership global economy cotton industry