Simina LAKATOS is founding President of the Institute for Circular Economy and Environment "Ernest Lupan" (IRCEM) since 2012. Simina has economical and technical knowledge, abilities and experience: she holds a B.A. in Economics and a B.A. Honours  in Materials and Environment Engineering. She obtianed a Doctorate in Engineering and Management in 2011 after defending her thesis on Corporate Social Responsibility. Simina has been part of the Dept. of Management and Economical Engineering of UTC since 2011, where she teaches and researches the following areas: Sustainable Development with focus in circular economy, Strategic Management with focus in social economy, Enterprise Assessment and Marketing and International Management, all of which helps her to develop the IRCEM. Her focus is to accelerate the transition towards circularity from the bottom up with concerted actions, developing practical and scalable solutions, national campaigns, communicating and involving ohters in the dissemination of the circular economy and sustainable development message. Simina is Romanian and is fluent in English and Italian.

Romina Giovannetti joined Ecoembes in 2019 as Head of EU Public Affairs. She has 20 years of public policy and communications experience in Brussels, together with a track record in journalism in South America.
 
Romina previously served as Public Affairs Associate Director at consultancy Weber Shandwick. With an expertise in European funding and industrial and environmental policy she acted as an advisor to a number of associations, corporations and NGOs.
 
Prior to that, Romina worked with a number of Brussels-based associations, spearheading their employment, sustainability and transport dossiers. She spent the early part of her career as a news reporter and editor at Argentina’s leading media group Clarín.
 
Ecoembes is a non-profit organization that cares for the environment through recycling and the eco-design of packaging in Spain. While implementing the Extender Producer Responsibility, it engages with citizens, public authorities and companies, in a collaborative spirit, to improve the environmental impact of household packaging.

At the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) Jean-Pierre is the policy officer responsible for Product Policy and Circular Economy.

The EEB is Europe’s largest network of environmental citizens’ organisations with around 140 organisations in more than 30 countries. Jean-Pierre has a Masters degree in Environmental Policy from Humboldt University Berlin and in Geography from the University of Oxford.

Prior to joining the EEB, Jean-Pierre worked for four years at the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) in Brussels, as part of their Green Economy programme where he specialised in plastics, market-based instruments and economic indicators. At IEEP he published a number of reports on a range of environmental issues for the European Commission, European Parliament, UN Environment and the OECD.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is a UK charity with the aim of accelerating the transition to the circular economy. 

Since its creation the charity has emerged as a global thought leader, establishing the circular economy on the agenda of decision makers across business, government and academia. Maja has been with the Foundation’s the Gov. & Cities team since 2015, where her work revolves around supporting policymakers at international, national, regional and local level in driving circular economy initiatives.