David Stirling - Hatch Foundation Symposium Speech
Orrin G. Hatch Foundation Symposium
GLOBAL PEACE AND STABILITY: ASSESSING CURRENT CHALLENGES AND FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES
Grand America, Salt Lake City, Utah
October 8, 2020
I am pleased and honored to participate in the Orrin G. Hatch Center symposium on current challenges
and future opportunities for global peace and stability. This topic is timely and important. I am
particularly honored to join Ambassadors O’Brien and Huntsman, and am grateful for their leadership
and willingness to serve in such critical positions. I also am eagerly awaiting to hear from our other
speakers today, who will share important insights, views, and even deeply personal experiences.
Before I begin, however, I turn briefly to Senator Hatch. Our country, state, and doTERRA owe him a
great deal of thanks. For the country, as I observe the continual impasses among our congressional
leaders, I am even more in awe today of his decades long success, and the ability to find common
ground amongst his peers to move our country forward. He successfully navigated partisan and
ideological differences in order to pursue much needed solutions. Finally, Senator Hatch’s passion for
empowering American citizens to pursue their own and families’ wellness with effective and safe
options, provided the legal framework for natural health and wellness companies, like doTERRA, to
thrive.
For anyone not familiar with doTERRA, dōTERRA is an integrative health and wellness company and the
world’s largest essential oil company. dōTERRA sources, tests, manufactures and distributes Certified
Pure Therapeutic Grade essential oils and essential oil products to over nine million Wellness Advocates
and customers around the world.
Today, doTERRA sells its products in over 125 countries and sources more than 170 different oils from
47 countries.
Peace in and between these countries would clearly not only make the world a better place, but also
immeasurably improve the lives of all the world’s inhabitants. We are doing our best to do our part in
making this a reality.
In the countries where we sell our oils, doTERRA is firmly engrained with the people it serves. We have
developed a unique direct selling model that focuses on empowering and educating the people
involved, providing great products, and enabling healthier lifestyles.
We were well aware of the negative perception associated with the traditional direct selling model
when we founded this company 12 years ago. It was a perception that we largely held as well.
We knew that our products were complex, and included a significant education curve, and that a
person-to-person model would be necessary to enable more people to become effective in the use of
the essential oils. It simply wouldn’t be possible to do this from a retail-shelf or website.
An obvious example is that with 170 different essential oils, each with its own exclusive chemical
composition, it can be difficult to truly understand the most efficacious and safe use of each unique
natural product without other informed and educated people to show you the way.
More pertinent to today’s topic is that doTERRA’s communities often span dozens of countries. We have
many teams that consist of, for example, Russian and Ukrainian members and massive teams that enjoy
the camaraderie of the Chinese, Taiwanese, and American citizens. The friendship and unity of purpose
that I witness every day from these teams transcends trade disputes and even more serious conflicts.
I have already noted that our involvement in the countries where we sell our oils is deep, complex, and
multi-layered, but the real magic is through our Co-Impact Sourcing Model, which is truly unique.
doTERRA produces an average of nearly 400,000 bottles of essential oils per day. This demand requires
that we grow and source well over 2 million kilos of essential oils every year.
To accomplish this, doTERRA has created an entirely new system—one that has the capacity to
empower hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers around the globe and provide a sustainable,
long-term supply of the purest and most potent medicinal quality essential oils in the world.
While doTERRA does have several significant farms around the world, our objective isn’t to build farms.
Rather, it is to build farmers.
We have revolutionized essential oil sourcing in order to empower these wonderful people who grow
and distill our natural products. We have seized on an amazing opportunity to create and sustain gamechanging
economic opportunities in underdeveloped communities all over the world. These initiatives
have captured our hearts and minds, and have significant meaning to our millions of consumers around
the globe.
Several governments have recognized our Co-Impact Sourcing work in their respective countries. For
example, two years ago, the Bulgarian Embassy in Washington, DC recognized doTERRA as the
“Company of the Year” in Bulgaria because of what doTERRA is doing to improve the lives of thousands
of its small farmers. In the past year, we have entertained ambassadors and government officials from
Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Azerbaijan. We have had heads of state and prominent government
officials visit our farms and facilities in their respective countries. We have been fortunate to develop
many friends in familiar and remote regions of the world. Their interest, of course, is largely driven by
the potential economic impact doTERRA can have on their respective countries and our track record of
helping to bring people out of poverty
Through doTERRA’s unique model, we provide and directly support over 300,000 sourcing related jobs,
which impacts many more lives.
I’d like to provide one example of how this model works, of employing small-scale farmers. Last year my
wife and I along with 50 others, visited one of our 18 major projects in the Lunga Lunga region of Kenya.
We employee over 800 farmers there, a number that continues to increase. These farmers will typically
have 1 to 4 acres of land, which they depend on for all of their family sustenance. They grow various
cash crops which they will try to sell in the local markets.
Several years ago, we began working with these farmers to grow Tee Tree or Melaleuca oil. We offered
to provide the seedlings, and guaranteed the purchase of their crop. At first they were skeptical, only
willing to dedicate part of their land to our plants. When they harvested their crop, we weighed the
material and paid them for it immediately. They were amazed, especially when the amount was four
times what they normally would make on their crops. Of course, they quickly converted the rest of their
land to growing our plants, and word quickly spread.
Today we grow millions of seedlings in our nursery each year, and provide them to these farmers. I
suppose this could be termed a “micro lending” aspect, and it works very well.
In the past these farmers were dependent on market demand, often getting very little for their labors.
Today, with consistent and dependable income, they are able to send their children to school, with hope
for a better and more productive life.
The other piece of our Co-Impact Sourcing includes doing what we can to take care of our growers and
their communities. Despite the challenges and constraints of the pandemic, we have managed to
complete more than 150 humanitarian projects around the world, in the last 12 months. One of these is
a hospital doTERRA recently completed in Somaliland, which serves 500,000 people, in one of the most
remote regions of the world, having no access to medical care. Even the World Health Organization was
stunned upon learning of the completion of this project. You may be wondering what drew us to
Somalia.
doTERRA requires more than 50 metric tons of Frankincense oil every year, requiring 100s of tons of
Frankincense resin, the majority of which we source from Somalia. We also have significant projects
being completed in Haiti, Kenya, India, Greece, Ukraine, China, and dozens of other countries that
continue to bind us to each other and together with the wonderful people in each of those countries.
Last November, my wife and I visited Khartoum the capital city of Sudan, at the invitation of Omer
Dahab, their former ambassador to the United States. Sudan is the largest producer in the world of
Frankincense, which they refer to as Gum Arabic. As we spent time with a number of young college
students, who shared so much hope and promise for the future, I gained a new appreciation for those
who are working so diligently through the complexities to lift the sanctions, imposed nearly 20 years
ago.
It is doTERRA’s feeling that people across countries and cultures share far more in common that brings
them together, than differences that push them apart. Every effort that can be made at a government
level to promote greater peace, stability, freedom, and human dignity, should be championed and
supported.
Our mantra at doTERRA is to pursue what’s pure. While this pursuit may start with pure essential oils, it
also includes pursuit of pure business relationships, and ends with pure intentions to bless humanity.
On behalf of over 9 million people now associated with doTERRA, in 125 different countries, we honor,
respect, and support the work that leaders around the world do to foster peace and stability among
nations and people. We are particularly grateful for anyone who is laboring on behalf of these
individuals who are finally being brought out of poverty and are most susceptible to the sometimesunintended
impact of government conflicts and trade disputes.
Thank you so much.