Meet Gerardo Piñero: the First Graduate of Worldly’s Platform Experts Program

Article key points: 

• Gerardo Piñero has worked on sustainability data from many angles—as a supplier, a brand, and an independent verifier—giving him a rare, three-sided view of what accurate reporting actually requires. 
• His biggest takeaway from the Worldly Platform Experts program: Data quality starts long before submission. Most accuracy is won or lost off-platform, in direct conversation with facilities.
• The Worldly Platform Experts Program surfaces the social and environmental blind spots that can hide in a supply chain and gives brands and facilities a credible way to collaborate with practitioners who truly understand the platform.
• For Latin American supply chain practitioners, Worldly’s program represents a clear opportunity to establish regional expertise on a globally recognized impact standard.

A rare combination of skills and experience

Gerardo Piñero, who is Argentine and based in Mexico City, is Sustainability Director at Minerva LATAM LLC, a Cascale-authorized Higg FEM Verifier and Trainer Body and ZDHC Training Provider. 

Piñero was trained in Occupational Health & Safety and Environmental Engineering and has spent fifteen years in environmental, health, and safety (EHS) and sustainability. In 2018, he became Latin America’s second-ever accredited Higg FEM Verifier (SAC 243) and has since completed 550+ verifications across 35+ countries. He leads supply chain data verification and training programs across the Americas region.

Throughout his career, including a decade at PUMA and three years at Minerva LATAM LLC, Piñero has participated in the apparel and footwear industry from three distinct angles: factory, brand, and independent verifier. He is Worldly’s first Platform Expert, and—to his knowledge—Latin America’s second-ever accredited Higg FEM Verifier.

We sat down with Gerardo to hear what his career arc looks like from the inside, and what completing the Platform Experts Program taught him.

Worldly: Tell us a bit more about yourself

Piñero: I’m Argentine, so when I’m not working I’m usually doing one of three things: running; lifting at the gym; or feeding friends, family, and even colleagues who visit from anywhere in the world—asado or pasta on Sundays is non-negotiable. 

There’s more in common between those things and my work than it sounds. Training teaches you discipline. Cooking teaches you that the result is only as good as the ingredients. Verification works the same way.

What I’m most passionate about professionally is the gap between what a sustainability report says and what’s actually happening at the facility. I’ve spent fifteen years closing that gap. And I care, maybe more than I should, about making sure Latin American practitioners are treated as a source of expertise in this industry, not just as a region on a map.

Worldly: How long have you been using the Worldly platform, in what capacity, and at which companies?

Piñero: My sustainability career started fifteen years ago. I’m a technical expert by training—Occupational Health & Safety with a specialization in Environmental Engineering—and that’s the lens I’ve carried into every role since.

What’s unusual about my path is that I’ve sat in all three chairs of this work—and they rarely belong to the same person. I started as EHS Responsible at PUMA’s only fully-owned factory in the world, in Argentina, sitting in the supplier’s chair. That’s the one entering and owning the data. 

From there I moved into PUMA’s Regional Sustainability Manager role for the Americas, and later EMEA, where I crossed over to the brand side—reviewing and challenging the reports of roughly 450 suppliers worldwide as part of PUMA’s global sustainability team. 

In 2018 I earned the credential for the third chair: accredited Higg FEM Verifier. To my knowledge I was only the second person in Latin America to hold it. And I initially performed second-party verifications across PUMA’s supply chain. In 2023 I joined Minerva as Sustainability Director where I was fully independent — an impartial third-party assessor of both sides of the conversation.

So, I’ve watched both the Higg Index tools and the Worldly platform grow up from three different angles, across every iteration. Today I’m Sustainability Director at Minerva LATAM LLC—a Cascale-authorized Higg FEM Verifier and Trainer Body and ZDHC Training Provider. We lead verification and training across the Americas region. The running tally is 550+ verifications in 35+ countries, accumulated across PUMA’s worldwide supply chain and under the Cascale program since 2018.

Worldly: What motivated you to sign up for the Worldly Platform Experts Program?

Piñero: There were two main reasons. The first is philosophical, the second is regional. 

Philosophically, I don’t think expertise should be self-declared. After 550+ verifications across PUMA’s brand side and Cascale’s verifier side—and having started on the factory floor itself—I wanted an external, structured benchmark to pressure-test what I thought I knew. 

Additionally, I felt it mattered that a Latin American, practitioner-led voice was visible in the program from day one. If we expect factories to commit to rigor, the people verifying their data should hold themselves to the same standard. Signing up was almost automatic for me.

Worldly: What was your experience with the program? What did you like best and benefit from the most? 

Piñero: What I valued most was unexpected: the chance to unlearn. After nearly a decade working with the Higg Index, and years using the Worldly platform, I came in assuming the program would mostly refine what I already knew. Instead, it asked me to unlearn and relearn—to confront how much the platform has evolved, and how much our reflexes as verifiers need to evolve alongside it. That kind of recalibration matters more than ever in the AI era, when the way data is captured, validated, and interpreted is shifting under our feet.

But the deepest reflection came in a different direction. Verifying since 2018 has given me a long view, and the program gave me a fresh lens to articulate something I’ve witnessed firsthand: Facilities can start with no baseline data, no internal champion, no systems—and over successive cycles, become mature operations. They can provide defensible data, clear reduction targets, and real floor-level ownership of their sustainability goals. Watching that transformation up close is the most rewarding part of this work.

Worldly: How has completing the program changed how you use the Worldly platform?

Piñero: The biggest difference is that now I use the Worldly platform with more intent. Field intuition—built first across PUMA’s Americas suppliers, now across Minerva’s verification work—is still my starting point, but the program gave me a sharper, more systematic map of where the platform’s logic can be misread. I ask better questions earlier in the verification cycle. I’m faster at flagging reporting choices that will cause friction downstream. And I think of Worldly not only as a reporting tool but also a shared language—the one that finally lets factories, brands, and verifiers understand each other.

Worldly: What would you tell someone else considering signing up for the Worldly Platform Experts Program?

Piñero: As another brand likes to say—just do it. Especially if you’ve been working with the Worldly assessments for years and think you already know them—that’s exactly the profile the program rewards, because it surfaces the blind spots experience hides. It’s structured, it respects your time, and the credential carries weight: Factories and brands can finally tell the difference between someone who has used the platform and someone who understands it. For Latin American colleagues in particular, this is our chance to put the region on the map of recognized expertise. I’d tell everyone to take it.

Worldly: Were there any big surprises or unexpected things you learned in the program?

Piñero: One surprise was how much the program emphasized teaching over verifying. I came in expecting a technical deep-dive, and I got one. But I also left with a new understanding that being a Worldly Platform Expert is also about being a translator: helping factories, brands, and auditors meet in the middle. That reframing has already changed how we structure Minerva’s training sessions across the region.

Worldly: Any final thoughts you’d like to share?

Piñero: Just gratitude. To the Worldly team—for building a program that takes practitioner expertise seriously. To Cascale, for the framework that makes this whole conversation possible. And most of all, to every factory team I’ve worked with—from my PUMA years to my current work at Minerva, from the clients who have grown with us year after year to the ones still to come—for trusting us to walk their floors honestly and to look at their data without flinching.

Being the first Worldly Platform Expert isn’t a finish line. It’s a commitment to keep raising the bar for Latin America, for our industry, and for the next generation of verifiers coming up behind us. The next decade of sustainability data will be defined by how well practitioners, platforms, and AI learn to work together. I intend to be part of that conversation.

Learn more about the Worldly Platform Experts Program

Gerardo Piñero’s path offers a clear signal: Rigorous, structured credentialing is becoming the new baseline for practitioners who want to lead in this space.

The Worldly Platform Experts Program is designed for practitioners who want to go beyond platform use to true platform mastery. Whether you’re a verifier, brand sustainability lead, or supplier-side EHS professional, explore how the program supports deeper data quality and stronger field outcomes.

Explore the Worldly Platform Experts Program for yourself.