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.

Begoña de Benito is the Director of External Affairs and Corporate Social Responsibility at Ecoembes, where she brings her experience in the consumer goods sector. From this position, she coordinates the relations among Administration, business organizations and civil society.

Mrs De Benito has a Law Degree from the Complutense University of Madrid and a Master's Degree in Economics and Business Management from the IESE (University of Navarra).

In the past 20 years, she has  gathered experience as a senior executive with commercial management and marketing management functions in the consumer goods sector, working as purchasing director in several departments of Ahold and as commercial director of Dinosol, a company in which she was also member of the corporate management committee and the executive committee. Mrs de Benito was also commercial and marketing director of the Spanish start-up Alice.es (e-commerce).

Ecoembes is a non for profit spanish organization taking care of environment through household packaging design and its recycling. As a great example of public-private collaboration, Ecoembes coordinates an Extender Producers Responsability Scheme in which citizens, public administrations and companies, work together 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.