David Vermijs

David has over a decade of experience advising multinational corporations, governments, NGOs and others on business and human rights. David engages with Shift's partners on an everyday basis, focusing particularly on helping companies identify, prioritize, mitigate and report on human rights risks as part of human rights due diligence. As Shift’s team member in the Netherlands, David is also the primary liaison with the Dutch government and Dutch companies and civil society on business respect for human rights. He has also supported the development of several practical guidance tools with a range of Shift's international partners, including authoring the ILO-IOE Child Labor Guidance Tool for Business, the content of which also forms the substantive basis for the Dutch "Child Labor Duty of Care Law," and Doing Business With Respect for Human Rights: A Guidance Tool for Companies.

Prior to joining Shift, David provided research assistance to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for business and human rights John Ruggie. As part of his contributions, David field tested human rights due diligence with a group of Dutch companies and their stakeholders, and he supported research on company-led grievance mechanisms. David was previously a Research Fellow at the Corporate Responsibility Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School. David sits in a personal capacity on the board of the Dutch Social and Economic Council International Corporate Social Responsibility Committee. He has a Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and a Bachelor of Arts in Business from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.