Chid Liberty was born in Liberia but left the country as an infant with his family when his father was appointed as Liberia’s ambassador to Germany. Subsequent civil wars in Liberia prevented the family from moving back, and they eventually settled in the United States. The work of Leymah Gbowee, a 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner who led a women’s peace crusade that helped end the second Liberian civil war, inspired him to establish Liberty & Justice (L&J). In 2009, at 30 years old, he raised about $3 million in start-up funding from US foundations and private investors to establish a Fair Trade Certified garment factory in Liberia. The enterprise provides work and education opportunities for Liberian women vulnerable to unemployment and economic exclusion following the war, which ended in 2003.
His co-founder, Adam Butlein, has been essential to the enterprise. In the early stages, Butlein helped secure much-needed venture philanthropy funding to sustain the start-up, contributing to its success—and the success of the women involved. L&J now supplies clothes and handbags to major American retailers like Prana and Haggar. Its new clothing label, Uniform, launched last year, provides a Liberian child with a school uniform (paywall) for every item sold. L&J’s latest initiative, Made in Africa (MIA) is a network of ethical factories clustered in Ghana, Liberia and Benin. It looks to establish seven additional fair trade apparel factories in Liberia and Ghana and expand elsewhere on the continent.
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