Simina Lakatos has been founding president of the Ernest Lupan Institute for Circular Economy and Environment (IRCEM) since 2012. She has economic and technical knowledge, abilities and experience: she holds a B.A. in Economics and a B.A. Honours in Materials and Environment Engineering. She obtained a Doctorate in Engineering and Management in 2011 after defending her thesis on Corporate Social Responsibility.

Simina has been part of the Department of Management and Engineering Economics of UTC since 2011, where she teaches and researches the following areas: sustainable development with a focus on the circular economy, strategic management with a focus on the social economy, enterprise assessment and marketing and international management, all of which helps her to develop IRCEM. Her focus is on accelerating the transition towards circularity from the bottom up with concerted actions, developing practical and scalable solutions, organising local/regional/EU campaigns, and communicating and involving others in the dissemination of information on the circular economy and messages on sustainable development. Simina is Romanian and speaks fluent English and Italian.

In her role as Director of Programmes, Hatty leads Circle Economy’s thematic and sector-focused portfolio (textiles, finance and built environment). Having worked for over 14 years in democratic strengthening and sustainable development, Hatty has extensive international experience of working with governments and parliamentary systems to enhance their capacity for effective oversight, scrutiny and representation in the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Hatty is an experienced portfolio manager, delivering a wide range of multi-year, multi-stakeholder international development programmes in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean. She has taken the lead on projects as wide ranging as enhancing the representation of women in public life in Pakistan to institutional strengthening in Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis.

Hatty has a background in project management and strategic organisational planning, with strong links across government and multilateral organisations. 

Key objectives at Circle Economy

- Build a comprehensive portfolio of sector + cross-sector programmes; working with government + industry  

- Develop multi-stakeholder projects, across government + industry, to support the circular transition at national level 

- Expand the profile and viability of Circle Economy in the Global South.

Brendan Edgerton is the Director of Circular Economy at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) in Geneva, Switzerland. Since arriving at WBCSD in 2015, he has managed the delivery of the Practitioner Guide (www.CEguide.org) and the 8 Business Cases to the Circular Economy and contributed to the Environmental Priorities for Business in the Circular Economy and the CEO Guide to the Circular Economy.

Brendan also contributed to the development and launch of Factor10, WBCSD’s circular economy programme. This programme was launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2018 with over 30 members, spanning 16 industries and generating over USD $1.3 trillion in annual turnover. He now manages multiple workstreams under Factor10 on circular metrics and sector deep dives.

Prior to WBCSD, Brendan’s work experience included life cycle assessment and costing at Walt Disney Imagineering, renewable and energy efficiency project identification at Office Depot and green building consulting with Green Dinosaur. Brendan has an MBA from the Yale School of Management, a Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and a bachelor’s degree with honors from the University of California Santa Cruz.

Walter Stahel has been the founder and director of the Product-Life Institute (Switzerland) since 1983, the oldest consultancy in Europe devoted to developing sustainable strategies and policies. From 1986 to 2014, he was also director of risk management research at the Geneva Association.

Currently, Walter Stahel works as an author, keynote speaker and storyteller. He promotes understanding of the structure of an economy in loops and its drivers and obstacles (circular industrial economy), spreads knowledge about the competitiveness of a performance economy selling goods and molecules as a service, and identifies the levers to speed up the shift from a linear industrial economy managing flows to a circular economy managing stocks. He does this through workshops, lectures and policy groups.

Founded in 2015, the Circular Economy Coalition for Europe is a platform of scientists and universities in the fields of resource management, waste management and anthropogenic metabolism. Working to support the transformation of the EU to an effective and efficient circular economy, the experts provide the European institutions, national decision-makers, businesses and the interested public with facts and data based on scientific methods and evidence.

Laura Cutaia, researcher at ENEA, is an Environmental Engineer (1996) with a PhD in raw materials engineering (2002). Her main research topics are:

• Industrial ecology and symbiosis,
• Technology for raw and secondary materials treatment,
• Resources management,
• Life Cycle Assessment,
• Environmental certification,
• End of life management.

Laura Cutaia is responsible for making the most of resources at ENEA , where she is working on the circular economy and resource efficiency, industrial ecology and symbiosis, LCA, environmental certification schemes, the REACH regulation and sustainable industrial areas (more information).

Laura Cutaia is also president of SUN - Symbiosis Users Network (Italian network for industrial symbiosis) and president of UNI CT 057 on the circular economy that works with ISO TC 323 on the circular economy. UNI is the Italian body responsible for standardisation.

Kari Herlevi is a circular economy multitalent. He is currently leading the circular economy area at Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund. There, he is focusing on the transition to a fair and competitive economy that tackles the root causes of biodiversity loss, climate change and overconsumption of resources, by facilitating the development and scaling up of the best circular solutions from Finland and the world. Previously, he worked at Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation, where he was responsible for the Green Growth and Vigo accelerator programmes. Kari also worked in the Tekes Silicon Valley office for a few years, and is particularly interested in new ideas and fast-growing firms in the circular economy, not least on the African continent.

As an adviser for environmental and climate policy, Leon de Graaf particularly follows policies related to the circular economy, trade and climate, low-emission mobility, implementation of the Paris climate agreement (COP21) and the European emission trading system (EU ETS). He is also deputy manager of BusinessEurope's corporate Advisory and Support Group (ASGroup). Prior to joining BusinessEurope, Leon worked at the research consultancy Ecorys, focusing on renewable energy and international development issues, at DG COMP on energy and environmental subsidies in Europe, and at the Dutch Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) on indirect ETS costs for energy-intensive industries. Leon has a MSc in environmental economics and climate change from the London School of Economics, and a BSc in business economics from the University of Groningen.

Ladeja Godina Košir, Founder and Executive Director of Circular Change, is an internationally renowned expert on the circular economy, speaker, (co)author of several CE reports and articles, and co-creator of international circular economy events. Ladeja was the finalist for the Circular Leadership Award 2018 (Davos WEF) and named in "The #EUwomen4future campaign” featuring extraordinary women active in research, innovation, education, culture and sport by Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth in 2020. She is recognised as the regional "engine of circular economy transition". She is co-author of the first Roadmap towards the Circular Economy and creator and team leader of the annual international Circular Change Conference. Ladeja has consulted on the national circular economy roadmapping process based on stakeholder engagement for several countries and cities (Serbia, Montenegro, Norway, Israel, Chile, etc.).

Ladeja has several international roles: chair of the coordination group of the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform (ECESP) in Brussels (2018/20), visiting professor at Doshisha University in Kyoto and co-leader of the Research Group Circular Economy Systems at the Bertalanfy Center for the Study of Systems Science (BCSSS) in Vienna.

Ladeja takes a transdisciplinary systemic approach and holistic view as an entrepreneur, communications professional, speaker, moderator, lecturer, mentor and passionate connector. She is empowering a new narrative and circular culture. She bridges the bioeconomy and the circular economy; one of the EU projects to which she contributes is Effective (Horizon 2020 & BBI JU), a multi-company collaboration to produce more sustainable, bio-based fibres and plastics for large consumer products using renewable feedstocks and innovative technologies. She also chairs the expert group for the BIOeast Foresight Exercise 2050. Ladeja works with governments, city authorities, companies, NGOs, media and universities, empowering true collaboration to enable circular change.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is a UK charity which aims to speed up the transition to the circular economy. Since it was set up, the charity has emerged as a global thought leader, putting the circular economy on the agenda of decision makers across business, government and academia.

Carsten Wachholz joined the Foundation in 2020 after spending two years working for the European Investment Bank on Corporate Responsibility and another four years working for the European Environmental Bureau on the first EU Circular Economy Action Plan. Carsten leads the Foundation's newly established Brussels-based team supporting the development of circular economy policies at EU and international level (e.g. G20, OECD), in close collaboration with the Foundation's systemic initiatives on plastics, fashion and food.

The Association of Cities and Regions for sustainable Resource management is an international network of cities and regions sharing the aim of promoting a sustainable resource management, through prevention at source, reuse and recycling, and accelerating the transition towards a circular economy on their territories and beyond. The network currently counts about 100 members, mainly local and regional authorities as well as national networks of local authorities representing around 1100 municipalities. ACR+ is directly represented in 23 countries of the European Union, and the network can also rely on members in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Palestine and Jordan

Francesco LEMBO is Managing Director at ACR+, overseeing programs and projects, and ensuring that strategic plans and realistic objectives are in place and monitored. His key duties include fundraising, marketing, community and stakeholders’ outreach. He has over ten years of experience in supporting public administrations, SMEs, employers' associations, NGOs and universities in the design and management of international programs on lifelong learning and sustainable development. He has been advocating for the active involvement of citizens in the development of local and EU policies and the dissemination of inclusive educational models, also designing training programs focused on sustainable development and social inclusion. He wrote about inclusive pedagogy and recognition of prior learnings, and circular economy education. He has a Bachelor in contemporary history, and then followed MA studies in Lifelong Learning Sciences.