By THE PACKER STAFF October 14, 2024

Editor’s note: The following profile is from the 2024 Packer 25, our annual tribute to 25 leaders, innovators and agents of change across the fresh produce supply chain. (You can view all honorees here.) This feature has been edited for length and clarity.

Madison Hopper — Marketing manager, Equifruit

If you’ve ever wondered if a lesson on fair trade bananas can be hidden inside a cat meme, just ask Madison Hopper. As marketing manager for the Women Owned, Montreal-based Equifruit, Hopper is a critical member of a dynamic team delivering banana industry-changing marketing campaigns that are as memorable as they are impossible to ignore.

Why Equifruit? What drives you to give your all to Fairtrade International-certified bananas and the “Banana Badass” team?

Fairtrade International is the gold standard in ethical certification. It is the only certification owned 50% by producers and has rigorous sustainable pricing mechanisms for growers. I don’t want to live in a world where the place you happen to have been born dictates your access to basic resources and caps your ability to scale a business.

Watching the unprecedented growth of fair trade banana sales over the past three years brings me tremendous satisfaction; I’m completely addicted to witnessing the positive changes at the grower level. Every small win for Equifruit and our partners is a total eruption of joy, and our joy is infectious. I think that everyone deserves to work for a company that leaves the world better today than it was yesterday, and I think everyone would be as driven to succeed as the Banana Badasses had they the opportunity to work with such purpose.

Equifruit’s social media presence is next level. What is your philosophy or strategic vision for social campaigns, and how do you measure success? 

We realized a few years ago that people would rather watch cat memes than listen to a lecture on the dark sociopolitical history of the banana industry. We don’t judge these quirks; instead, we embrace them. So, with the help of our incredible creative agency, TUX, we asked ourselves, “Is there a way to hide a banana lecture inside of a cat meme?” It turns out that you can — in fact, most things we can’t help but love can be finessed into a post about bananas!

Our whole strategy can be summed up as follows: We make Equifruit Fairtrade a concept as appetizing and loved as pop culture, and it is working very well.

What advice do you have for young women considering a career in fresh produce?

The best advice I’ve ever been given when searching for a job was: “Write down everything you want in an ideal co-worker on a piece of paper, make a giant list, then go out and become that person.” You attract what you give.

On a more somber note, in produce (like any other industry) it is possible that you may find yourself in a misogynistic culture; don’t stay. Your mental and emotional well-being is the most important thing you have, and there are companies out there, like Equifruit, that take diversity, equity and inclusion very seriously. The urge to change a culture from within is noble, but leading by example for an entire industry through an inclusive, respectful and respectable employer is way more fun.