When I was in my early 30s, I truly felt like I was on top of the world. I’d been hired by the Glencore, the largest commodity trader in the world and perhaps the cream of the corporate crop in my home country of Switzerland. There, I had quickly established myself as a leader who could get things done, and was promoted to a senior managerial position. For a Swiss native who loved business, had worked hard for my CPA, and had previously worked for Deloitte, it seemed like my career trajectory could hardly be better.

But something profound was sneaking up on me. A totally new feeling. And it finally reared its head to me while I was on a business trip in Peru. The trip was truly eye-opening to me, as I got to visit miners and actual mines for the first time in my life. I saw the terribly difficult conditions that these miners lived and worked in, and was amazed that they worked for the same company that I did. Each day I was shaken and amazed by what I saw and heard, and would then return to my hotel room and reflect on it all.

It was there that I had a profound, life-changing experience that I can only describe as a true epiphany. I understood that the work I was doing, and the way I was living my life, was not making the world better. I realized that I was a cog in a corporate machine, and that I wasn’t really investing my life in something truly creative and unique. I realized that I was part of a system that I didn’t truly agree with, and which didn’t even need me. And I decided then and there that I needed to take responsibility for my own life and for the fate of the world around me.

I returned to Switzerland and quit my job immediately, announcing to my colleagues, friends, and family that I was going to take a year-long sabbatical. The idea was to clear my head, get some distance from the world I knew, and figure out what to do next. I decided to go to Mexico, partly because it was a place that had always fascinated me, and partly because I didn’t know it at all. Maybe it would help me clear the slate.

In Mexico, I experimented with a new way of living, but it wasn’t long before I realized that business was truly in my DNA, and that I wanted to return to the fold. But this time it had to be a new kind of business—a business that actually made the world a better place. It was my responsibility to put my talents on the table for a mission I could truly call my own.

I discovered that mission when I was introduced to small-scale farmers in Latin America—first in Mexico, then in Argentina, then elsewhere. I listened to their stories of hardship, and understood almost immediately that I had the skills to help them earn a better living and change their lives. In 2005, I shipped the world’s first container of organic, Fairtrade avocados, from small-scale farmers in Mexico to some buyers in Holland, and my social enterprise was born.

Fairtrasa’s mission was—and still is—to empower small-scale farmers to lift themselves out of poverty through organic farming and fair trade. It started with that single container of avocados, but it has grown over the last decade into a truly global and impactful force in the sustainable food and farmer-development space, with 15 distinct companies in 10 countries and about 7,000 partner farmers.

Needless to say, the process was not easy. I’ve encountered a wide array of difficult problems and crises, from the merely annoying to the truly difficult and existential; but every time a crisis arose, I was able to conquer it by re-committing to my mission, and I always grew through the process….