October 9, 2026 · 41 min · Episode 784
Dignity Through Work: Julie Colombino-Billingham on the Power of Sustainable Livelihoods
About this episode
Anika sat down with Julie Colombino-Billingham to explore how a single sentence in a Haitian tent camp sparked a 16-year journey into ethical manufacturing and social enterprise. The conversation revealed a counterintuitive truth: long-term human alleviation isn't about handouts or aid—it's about sustainable livelihoods. Julie's transition from a disaster responder and former professional dancer to founding Deux Mains (formerly Rebuild Globally) offered practical pushbacks against the traditional white-savior mindset, alongside a sharp look at how empowering local leadership creates resilience even amidst extreme geopolitical and gang-controlled strife.
In This Episode
- The pivotal moment in a Haitian tent camp where a woman declared, "I don't need water, I need a job"
- Transitioning initial recycling efforts from tire sandals to luxury fair-trade leather handbags
- How local leadership under partner Jolina Desroche built the true foundation of the factory
- Navigating extreme adversity, natural disasters, and operating in a gang-controlled red zone in Port-au-Prince
- The power of the Haitian spirit, tenacity, and the daily reality of running a solar-powered facility
- Expanding impact through school shoe production and providing steady community support
- The evolution of ethical retail partnerships with brands like Nordstrom and Kenneth Cole
- Balancing purposed-driven mission with the hard business realities of customer demand and sales
- Moving past the white-savior complex through genuine listening, local agency, and shared human connection
- The deeply personal, life-saving impact of shared purpose and building a lasting legacy from loss
Timestamps
- 00:00 Introduction: Unraveling thriving business strategies and welcoming Julie Colombino-Billingham
- 01:38 The origin story: A fateful sentence in a post-earthquake Haitian tent camp
- 03:39 Building a factory from a tarp shack to a solar-powered manufacturing center
- 08:01 From recycled tire sandals to luxury fair-trade leather handbags
- 10:32 The Haitian spirit of tenacity: Crying for three seconds and getting back to work
- 13:30 Operating in a Port-au-Prince red zone, gang dynamics, and producing school shoes
- 15:19 The power of purchasing choice and fair-trade verification with Nordstrom
- 17:35 Lessons from Cirque du Soleil, ballet, and disaster response applied to CEO leadership
- 19:15 Respecting Haiti's rich history and dismantling white-savior dynamics
- 22:29 Integrating nonprofit job training with a guaranteed manufacturing career path
- 26:35 Writing the memoir From Lost to Legacy and capturing colleague stories
- 28:16 Personal redemption, infertility, and growing alongside team members like Roni
- 31:12 Strategic partnerships, fair-trade federation validation, and balancing sales with ethics
- 33:02 Maintaining on-the-ground perspective through frequent travel and shared reality
- 34:46 Learning hard business lessons from Kenneth Cole on customer appeal
- 36:39 Expanding the brand: Opening the first storefront in Lake Worth Beach, Florida
- 38:00 Why local middle and high management is the secret to surviving civil unrest
- 39:49 North Star: "Dignity through work is the greatest human right"
Key Insights & Takeaways
Insight 1: Jobs, Not Aid, Drive Long-Term Recovery
Immediate disaster relief provides critical emergency support, but lasting human alleviation requires economic empowerment. Providing dignified, living-wage employment restores personal autonomy and rebuilds communities from the inside out.
Insight 2: Local Leadership Prevents Collapse
Foreign-run enterprises in volatile regions often fail when external support withdraws. Empowering local leadership and ensuring high management teams are native community members ensures a business can survive severe civil unrest and geopolitical disruption.
Insight 3: Purpose Must Meet Market Reality
Operating a social enterprise does not exempt founders from core business fundamentals. Purpose-driven brands must still create exceptional, high-quality products that consumers genuinely want to buy based on craftsmanship and style alone.
Insight 4: Guard Against the White-Savior Complex
True collaboration requires respecting local customs, history, and institutional systems rather than imposing external assumptions. Listening to local partners and acknowledging their expertise is essential for authentic social enterprise.
Insight 5: Perspective Requires Proximity
It is easy for leaders operating from comfortable environments to lose touch with the daily realities of their frontline workforce. Staying deeply connected to the ground ensures empathy and operational decisions remain grounded in human need.
Insight 6: Dignity Through Work Is a Fundamental Right
True entrepreneurial success and social impact go beyond financial metrics. Ensuring that every individual has access to meaningful, fairly compensated labor is one of the most powerful rights we can secure for humanity.
Resources & Links Mentioned
- Deux Mains (Fair-trade luxury leather accessories brand and solar-powered factory)
- Rebuild Globally (Nonprofit pathways to education and job training)
- From Lost to Legacy (Julie's memoir sharing her journey and colleague stories)
- Fair Trade Federation
About Julie Colombino-Billingham
Julie Colombino-Billingham is a social entrepreneur, disaster responder, author, and the founder of Deux Mains. After spending years in disaster relief and witnessing firsthand the need for economic opportunity in post-earthquake Haiti, she partnered with local leaders to build Port-au-Prince's premier women-owned, solar-powered manufacturing facility. Today, Deux Mains provides dignified, living-wage employment, crafts luxury fair-trade leather goods, distributes school shoes to children, and partners with major retailers like Nordstrom. She is the author of From Lost to Legacy and an advocate for the principle that dignity through work is a fundamental human right.
Connect with Julie
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deuxmains_official/
- Website: https://deuxmains.com/
YBA was named the top PR podcast in the US by FeedSpot! Feedspot is an RSS Reader that lets you follow your favorite podcasts alongside blogs and news in one place.
Like the show? Leave us a rating or review: https://lovethepodcast.com/67940257010b317cdaa9d857
Send us a Message: https://podcastfeedback.com/67940257010b317cdaa9d857
Check out our Website: https://www.yourbrandamplified.com
Speak to my Delphi Clone: https://www.delphi.ai/amplifywithanika
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Article
Julie Colombino-Billingham on Building Deux Mains, a Fair-Trade Handbag Brand Creating Jobs in Haiti
Julie Colombino-Billingham founded Deux Mains, a social enterprise in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, that makes fair-trade leather handbags and school shoes and trains young people for guaranteed jobs. In this episode of Your Brand Amplified, she explains how the company grew from a wood-and-tarpaulin shack in 2010 into a brand stocked by Nordstrom, and why it stays in Haitian hands. Her core point: dignified employment does more than emergency aid, and a mission is no excuse for weak business discipline.
How did Deux Mains start?
Deux Mains started with one sentence. A Haitian woman in a tent camp told Colombino-Billingham, "I don't need water, I need a job." Emergency relief couldn't address the poverty that kept communities exposed to repeated crises. People needed work that let them support their families.
The company began in 2010 in a shack made of wood and tarpaulin. Its key decisions came from working with local leadership: using recycled shipping containers, adopting solar power for financial stability as well as environmental reasons, and shifting from recycled tire sandals to leather handbags. Colombino-Billingham developed these with Jolina Desroche, a Haitian woman whose local knowledge and commitment to job creation became the foundation of the business. The approach rejects the white-savior narrative common in international development.
The team has been tested. In 2012, fires, floods, theft and illness came in quick succession, and the team kept returning to work. Colombino-Billingham calls it the Haitian spirit. She also notes that what outsiders read as chaos is often an informal economy built on barter, relationships and mutual support, and that foreign investors who ignore it make mistakes. Because management stays in Haitian hands, the factory keeps operating through the current gang violence, which has forced her to work mostly from Florida while the Haitian team shows up every day.
Why does a social enterprise still need business discipline?
A social enterprise has to compete in the market, meet customer expectations and earn the revenue that funds its impact. The mission is creating dignified employment and supporting vulnerable youth through education and training, but that doesn't excuse weak execution. Colombino-Billingham took years to absorb a lesson from industry veterans like Kenneth Cole: customers must actually want to buy what you make. Taking it seriously moved the company from niche products to retailers like Nordstrom. More distribution means more jobs.
Fair-trade certification opened doors with major retailers. She also found that customers often buy the bags for their design and craftsmanship rather than for ethical sourcing. The work of Haitian artisans stands on its own, and ethical production is an added benefit rather than the only selling point.
How does Deux Mains create jobs where none exist?
With a seventy-nine percent unemployment rate, there were no jobs to train people for, so Deux Mains created them. A nonprofit arm runs education and job training, and graduates are guaranteed one hundred percent employment in roles from artisan to operations manager. The current operations manager, Roni, was a thirteen-year-old street entrepreneur when the team met him. He enrolled in the training program despite his mother's warnings about foreigners and now leads operational decisions at the factory.
The company has also provided roughly twenty thousand pairs of school shoes to Haitian children in recent years, which helps them attend school in proper uniforms and creates more work. Supplying shoes to the school attended by gang members' children is a practical way to earn acceptance in areas gang networks control. Those networks effectively tax all business activity, including transportation, materials and port access, which has cut margins sharply. Each purchase goes directly to income for specific families.
Colombino-Billingham wrote a memoir so her Haitian colleagues' stories would be preserved. Building the company during her own experience with infertility gave her a sense of belonging, and she describes the team as family. She is clear that it is not one woman's story of saving a nation but a collective effort. Deux Mains is working toward its first physical storefront and more school shoe production.
"Dignity through work is one of the greatest human rights."
Key takeaways
- Listen to the people you intend to serve; Deux Mains began with "I don't need water, I need a job."
- Keep leadership local; Haitian management keeps the factory running through crisis.
- Make products people want for their quality, and treat ethical production as an added benefit.
- Where jobs don't exist, create them: train people and guarantee employment on graduation.
- Greater distribution, such as Nordstrom, means greater impact.
Listen to Anika Jackson's full conversation with Julie Colombino-Billingham on Your Brand Amplified.
Get booked on podcasts
We book you on 5 to 10 high-quality podcasts every month.
Podcast Guest BookingStart your own show
Coaching and a peer network for experts building a branded podcast.
Your Branded Podcast™