Meet our speakers.
Get ready to hear from leading design, business and sustainability visionaries from around the world, exploring design-led solutions to today’s biggest challenges.
Keep checking back as we'll be adding many more soon.
Get ready to hear from leading design, business and sustainability visionaries from around the world, exploring design-led solutions to today’s biggest challenges.
Keep checking back as we'll be adding many more soon.
The common thread in Alexei’s life has been about creating and nurturing divergent ideas and teams that have the potential to bring about positive change. Alexei kicked off his career working in the nascent Supply Chain technology space at US based i2 Technologies (Blue Yonder). After stints in Software solutions companies such as MatrixOne (Dassault), MRO (IBM) and Ariba (SAP), Alexei struck out on his own moving to Poland and building a small team offering consultancy to the industry. Later Alexei co-founded the Innovation Consultancy UnfroZenmind based in Paris.
After returning to the UK Alexei teamed up with colleagues to co-found the award winning Abundance, an FCA regulated Crowdfunding company that has to date brought in over £120m from the crowd to fund over 20 renewable energy projects in the UK. Having successfully fundraised and established the team Alexei left the venture to spend a year working at the South India based Kanthari, an NGO that provides a year long Leadership Development programme for blind and disabled would be social entrepreneurs. Working with 18 incredible visionaries from across the world to help them imagine and establish their projects, Alexei worked with the founder Sabriye Tenberken to develop a curriculum that became the basis of the programme today.
Alexei chose to stay on in India and established the social business ixspark, an innovation and product development lab based in Kerala enabling various social innovation initiatives and NGO, corporate and government collaborations.
In India Alexei co-founded CU Wellness together with a world class product development team between Silicon Valley and India as a means of bringing disruptive consumer wearable products including Smart Buckle, Fasting Culture and Poppins to people across the world.
Alexei also co-founded Desolenator, a gamechanging technology that transforms almost any water source into clean drinking water using only the power of the sun. The patented solar powered desalination device Desolenator has gone on to win awards from NASA, Singularity University, Climate KiC and includes early customers such as Dubai Government (DEWA) and Carlsberg.
After 30 years in various executive and design management positions in the automotive industry, Global Executive Director at General Motors in charge of the Design of the group's eight brands, and Renault Design Director for the Twingo, Clio & Scénic programs, Anne ASENSIO joins Dassault Systèmes in 2008 as Vice President Design Experience. She created the ""Design"" discipline and design research department of Dassault Systèmes as well as the DESIGNStudio entity, bringing together a multidisciplinary team in innovation strategy through design, experience design, upstream thinking, design research, design management.
Advocating a participatory approach with regard to new technologies and virtual universes, the DESIGNStudio supports Dassault Systèmes’ customers in fast-growing industrial sectors in their needs for transformation, digital and sustainable innovation, towards new business models for a circular economy, towards virtuous design processes, as a manifestation of their value proposition to their end customers.
Anne collaborates with designers, artists, maverick thinkers, innovators in diverse industry and public sectors. Imagining alternatives strategies to transform the world we live in in a more sustainable and desirable one, Anne enables cross-thinking, colliding nature inspired and technological approaches through creation and ultimately leverage the value of design for users, citizens and humans’ well-being.
Anne Asensio contributes to a number of publications, is a member of several boards in industry, business and academia, as well as a regular jury member internationally.
Anne holds a Master of Arts in transportation design from Detroit-based College for Creative Studies and a DSAA of industrial design from Paris-based Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués (ENSAAMA). Anne has been made Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Officier de l’Ordre du Mérite.
Bas van Abel is an entrepreneur and designer with over 20 years of experience in social innovation. Passionate about transforming the economic system through a design-driven approach, he believes that businesses play a crucial role in driving the transition toward a more sustainable economy. As a designer, Bas explores the invisible complexities of production systems, uncovering hidden challenges and bringing them to light. Through his companies, he demonstrates that alternative, more sustainable ways of doing business are not only possible but essential for meaningful change.
Bas is the founder of the most sustainable and ethical smartphone in the world, Fairphone (fairphone.com) and Co-founder of circular startup De Clique (declique.com).
He advises companies in their sustainability transition, co-authored the book “Open Design Now” and is an Ashoka fellow, a network of the world's most prominent social entrepreneurs.
His work has earned him global recognition, including being named Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the World Economic Forum and receiving the Global Economy Prize. Fairphone has been recognised for its groundbreaking impact, featuring in Time’s Best Inventions (2020 & 2022) and receiving the United Nations Momentum of Change Award, presented by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. It was also named the most sustainable consumer electronics company in the world by Greenpeace and has won multiple design awards, including winner Product Design at the New York Design Awards, and voted the Coolest Dutch Brand amongst countless others.
Brian Eno - musician, producer, visual artist and activist first came to international prominence in the early seventies as a founding member of British band, Roxy Music, followed by a series of solo albums and collaborations. His work as producer includes albums with Talking Heads, Devo, U2, Laurie Anderson, James, Jane Siberry and Coldplay, while his long list of collaborations include recordings with David Bowie, Jon Hassell, Harold Budd, David Byrne, Grace Jones, his brother, Roger, on ‘Mixing Colours’ and recently with Fred Again. In January 2024, ‘Eno’, a generative film about his life was screened at Sundance film festival to critical acclaim. It was accompanied by a soundtrack release with new unreleased songs and classic Eno recordings spanning five decades.
Eno’s visual experiments with light and video continue to parallel his musical career, with exhibitions and installations all over the globe. He has exhibited extensively, as far afield as St. Petersburg’s Marble Palace, Ritan Park in Beijing, Arcos de Lapa in Rio de Janeiro and the sails of the Sydney Opera House. He is involved in multiple activist work, such as the climate charity Earth Percent and HardArt, both of which he co-founded, as well as the Stop The War coalition. He is a founding member of the Long Now Foundation, a trustee of Client Earth and patron of Videre est Credere. In 2023, Brian was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the Venice Biennale Musica. He has recently written his second book, “What Art Does” co-authored with Bette A and based upon his experience as an artist. Published by Faber, it was released in January 2025.
Carlo Chen-Delantar is a Partner and Head of ESG and Circular Economy at Gobi Partners, a leading Asia-focused venture capital firm with $2 billion AUM. He champions responsible investments and tech ecosystem development through the Gobi-Core Philippine Fund, backing startups like Kumu, Cloudeats, and Tier One. Carlo is recognized in social entrepreneurship, climate action, and circular economy. He collaborates with organizations like the World Economic Forum, Asian Development Bank, and the United Nations, serving on startup, nonprofit, and government boards. He’s a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and Circular Economy Pioneer at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Charlot is a 2022 Earthshot Prize Winner! Orphaned at the age of 10, she grew up in Mukuru, one of the biggest slums in Nairobi, and became a mother at age 16. Charlot was moved to provide safer cooking technologies for her community when her daughter got burned by a traditional stove and has dedicated her time, skills, and experience fighting household air pollution, Energy poverty and Malaria. Her organization, Mukuru Clean Stoves, has manufactured and distributed over 550,000 life saving cookstoves, impacting the lives of 2.7 million Africans living in poverty and just launched the first in the world, patent pending, mosquito repellent fuel.
She has been recognized and awarded by Global Citizen, World Bank, United Nations. She is one of the 100 most influential Young Africans and was named a Forbes Sustainability Leader and Independent Climate 100 in 2024. Charlot is an Echoing Green Fellow, Schmidt Futures Fellow, Africa Business Hero, Global Good Fund Fellow, Stanford Global Energy Hero, Cartier Fellow, Forbes under 30 lister, Forbes Africa Youth Icon, One young World Entrepreneur of the year, Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awardee and a Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst. She sits on the board of three international funds and William, the Prince of Wales proudly calls her the queen of Africa!
Dr. Graeme Heyes is the Director of Sustainable Innovation at Litmus Sustainability and the Founder of the Manchester Doughnut Economics community. He has over 15 years of expertise in helping organizations understand their sustainability challenges and think creatively about thriving in a low-carbon economy. His career is built on a portfolio of work with a diverse range of over 300 clients from the European Commission to major international clients, SMEs, and local community groups.
Formerly a Senior Lecturer in Strategic Sustainability and Systems Design, Graeme's multi-award-winning work includes the 2023 European SDG Initiative of the Year and the UK Net-Zero Business Collaboration of the Year 2023, and his sustainability training has been recognized by the UK Government as the ""Gold Standard in Green Skills Training."" His experience spans circular economy, eco-design, Doughnut Economics, Carbon Literacy, environmental management, carbon accounting, business model innovation, and strategic innovation. Graeme is deeply passionate about sustainability and sustainable practice and has written and spoken widely on these themes through a range of talks, lectures, keynotes, and writings.
Indy is co-founder of Dark Matter Labs and of the RIBA award winning architecture and urban practice Architecture00. He is also a founding director of Open Systems Lab, seeded WikiHouse (open source housing) and Open Desk (open source furniture company).
Indy is a non-executive international Director of the BloxHub, the Nordic Hub for sustainable urbanization. He is on the advisory board for the Future Observatory and is part of the committee for the London Festival of Architecture. He is also a fellow of the London Interdisciplinary School.
Indy was 2016-17 Graham Willis Visiting Professorship at Sheffield University. He was Studio Master at the Architectural Association - 2019-2020, UNDP Innovation Facility Advisory Board Member 2016-20 and RIBA Trustee 2017-20.
He has taught & lectured at various institutions from the University of Bath, TU-Berlin; University College London, Princeton, Harvard, MIT and New School. He is currently a professor at RMIT University.
He was awarded the London Design Medal for Innovation in 2022 and an MBE for Services to Architecture in 2023.
Jo Barnard is the Founder and Creative Director of the product design and innovation consultancy Morrama. From the early strategy through to manufacturing and distribution, Jo works with brands looking to challenge what has come before and make the world better through design. Her design approach is rooted in storytelling, resulting in products that intuitively resonate with users in categories from tech to packaging. Jo believes in the power of design and innovation to accelerate our transition to a sustainable future and is co-director of the not-for-profit Design Declares. Jo’s award-winning work has been featured in The Times, Fast Company, Forbes, and Dezeen. She has been named one of the top 10 women to watch in tech and STEM. Outside of her work at Morrama, Jo is a mentor, speaker, and former Associate Lecturer of Design Futures at RCA.
Joanna Choukeir is Director of Design and Innovation at The RSA, and is responsible for championing how design and innovation is applied across the RSA community and policy and impact work to transition systems to be more regenerative for people, places and planet. She is a leading life-centric designer with four hats: practitioner, researcher, thought leader, and educator; with 20 years of experience in the UK and Lebanon.
Prior to joining the RSA, Joanna was Health Director at FutureGov (now TPX Impact), and had spent 10 years co-leading Uscreates – a pioneering design agency for health and wellbeing – through growth and onto acquisition. Before that, Joanna worked in advertising and industrial design sectors for global corporate clients.
In 2015, Joanna completed a PhD on design for social integration at the University of the Arts London. Alongside leadership, research and practice, Joanna is a PhD supervisor and visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art, University of the Arts London, Ravensbourne University and Kingston University. She is also founder of micro-social enterprise Design My Family Tree.
Julia Watson, Australian-born and of Greco-Egyptian descent, is a connoisseur of localized traditional ecological knowledge. She is the author of the 'Lo—TEK, Design by Radical Indigenism' (Taschen, 2019), which showcases the soft, earth-based technologies of Indigenous peoples the world over. Julia has travelled the world over to understand these technologies and respectfully share the messages of their makers with the world. Watson grew up in Australia, where aboriginal science and knowledge is not only acknowledged in the school system but systematically integrated into university curricula. She is thus driven to steer other nations towards properly respecting and integrating Indigenous knowledge into the “mainstream.” She studied landscape architecture at Harvard, taught for over a decade at institutions like Columbia, Harvard and RISD, cofounded the Lo—TEK Institute, and runs a design studio in Brooklyn, New York.
Julie Hjort is the COO at the Danish Design Center and spearheads the Center’s mission to accelerate the transition to a circular economy through design. She has been a driving force in developing a design-based approach to mission-oriented innovation, which she has applied at the DDC and in external partnerships to tackle sustainability challenges. For over a decade, Julie has worked with design, innovation, leadership and transformation in interdisciplinary and public/private partnerships.
Julie is Chair of Maker, an association for physical entrepreneurship that runs an urban prototyping lab in Copenhagen. She is a seasoned speaker on the topic of circular transformation and mission-oriented innovation. Julie was profiled as a prominent circular designer by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (fall 2023). Julie holds an MA in Contemporary Culture and Dissemination from the University of Copenhagen.
Kate Raworth is an ecological economist and creator of the Doughnut - a concept that aims to meet the needs of all people within the means of the living planet - and Co-founder of Doughnut Economics Action Lab.
Her internationally best-selling book 'Doughnut Economics: seven ways to think like a 21st century economist' has been translated into over 20 languages and has been widely influential with diverse audiences, from the UN General Assembly and Pope Francis to Extinction Rebellion. Kate is a Senior Teaching Fellow at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and Professor of Practice at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.
Over the past 30 years, Kate’s career has taken her from working with micro-entrepreneurs in the villages of Zanzibar to co-authoring the Human Development Report for UNDP in New York, followed by a decade as Senior Researcher at Oxfam. She holds a first-class BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, and MSc in Economics for Development, both from Oxford University and has honorary doctorates from the University of York, University College Dublin, KU Leuven, and Business School Lausanne.
Leland is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of COLLINS, the transformation consultancy honored as “Firm of the Year” 5 times in the last 5 years by AdAge and the D&AD. Between 2016 and 2021, Leland stepped away from his day-to-day duties at COLLINS to lead Chobani, then a regional American yogurt manufacturer, as its first Chief Creative Officer and, eventually, Chief Brand Officer. In those five years, he was part of a small executive team that 10x’d the company’s valuation, transforming the single-product yogurt maker into an international iconoclast brand. At Chobani, he built Ad-Age’s “2018 In-House Agency of the Year” and won top honors from major global award shows such as D&AD, Cannes, The One Show, among others. During his five years of leadership, Chobani topped Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Companies in the World” list five times – something not achieved by the manufacturer before or after his tenure. He has earned recognition from the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader, from IBM as “Design Thinking Leader,” from Ad Age as a “Young Influencer” and from the Association Of National Advertisers as a “Master of Marketing.
Leo is the CEO and founder of EdenLab the global green growth and sustainability innovation consultancy. EdenLab is 100% focused on switching demand to greener, cleaner products, brands and business models.
If you need help picturing a viable future he’ll help you figure it out, if you’ve got the right products he’ll help you get them to market at scale, and if you don’t he’ll help you design them.
EdenLab works on commercialising sustainability for clients like The FT, The FA, The Trainline, Unilever, Danone and EDF Ventures as well as a number of promising ClimateTech firms working in carbon capture, biodiversity monitoring and waste upcycling.
Previously he was CEO of world famous ad agency Grey London, where he had also been Chief Strategy Officer, before launching Grey Consulting a management consultancy within WPP.
Leo gained a distinction in Business Sustainability Management from the Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership and has an MA from Oxford. He’s a domain expert adviser to Carbon13 the Cambridge-based venture builder for the climate emergency. Leo has recently lectured at The Saïd Business School, the London School of Economics, UCL, Oxford University and The Marketing Society.
Leyla Acaroglu (PhD) is a leading sustainability strategist and provocateur – an expert on life cycle and systems thinking in design, production and consumption. Named Champion of the Earth by the UNEP in 2016, she is a designer, sociologist, educator and passionate proponent of sustainability in and through design. Leyla is also a well-respected international speaker, with over 1 million views on her TED talk. She developed the Disruptive Design Method for activating change, founded the UnSchool of Disruptive Design as well as the creative agency Disrupt Design, and created the rural regeneration, CO Project Farm in Portugal. Her award-winning designs and cerebrally-activating experiences, gamified toolkits, and unique educational experiences help people around the world to challenge the status quo and make positive social and environmental change.
Lisa Lang has gained international recognition on Forbes Europe’s Top 50 Women in Tech, Sustainable Thought Leader by Vogue Business and has been listed as one of the 50 most important women for innovation & startups in the EU.
Lisa Lang is the General Director of the Open Connector Foundation, a fundraising institution to push for a global transformation of the textile industry.
OCF is bridging private and public funding to push for a consolidated textile waste management, digitalisation and local manufacturing in partnership with NetZeroCities, United Nations and major industry partners across the globe.
Formerly the director for EU Affairs & Policy for the European Institute for Innovation and Technology on Climate (EIT Climate KIC), Lisa has been in the middle of European policy making with her global activity as Chair person for the Cultural & Creative Taskforce for UNFCCC United Nations Global Innovation Hub (UGIH).
Lisa Lang is on the advisory board for the Munich Sustainability Fashion Award, Fashion Innovation Centre as well as a member of EU groups for Pact for Skills, EU Industrial Forum and the US/EU Trade & Technology Council.
Mariam Issoufou is an architect from Niger. She studied architecture at the University of Washington. In 2014, she founded Mariam Issoufou Architects, an architecture and research practice that tackles public, cultural, residential, commercial and urban design projects from our offices in Niamey, New York and Zurich.
Issoufou’s design explorations are informed by rigorous research and a process rooted in conversations with end-users and collaboration with local crafters, masons and builders. The firm’s completed projects in Niger include the Hikma Community Complex, Niamey 2000, and Dandaji Regional Market. Upcoming projects include Yantala Office in Niger, the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development in Liberia, and Bët-bi Museum in Senegal.
Hikma Community Complex was awarded two LafargeHolcim Awards for sustainable architecture, while Niamey 2000 was shortlisted for 2022 Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
Mariana Mazzucato (PhD) is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL), where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose. She is winner of international prizes including the Grande Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana in 2021, Italy's highest civilian honour, the 2020 John von Neumann Award, the 2019 All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values, and 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. She is a member of the UK Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) and the Italian Academy of Sciences Lincei. Most recently, Pope Francis appointed her to the Pontifical Academy for Life for bringing ‘more humanity’ to the world.
As well as The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths (2013), she is the author of The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy (2018), Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism (2021), and most recently The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies (2023). She advises policymakers around the world on innovation-led inclusive and sustainable growth. Her roles have included for example Chair of the World Health Organization's Council on the Economics of Health for All, Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, a member of the South African President’s Economic Advisory Council, and the Co-Chair of the Group of Experts to the G20 Task Force for the Global Mobilization against Climate Change.
Michael Pawlyn is an architect, writer and public speaker. He has been described as an expert in regenerative design and biomimicry. He established his firm Exploration Architecture in 2007 to focus on high performance buildings and solutions for the circular economy. The company has developed a ground-breaking office project, an ultra-low energy data centre, a zero waste textiles factory and progressive solutions for green cities. Michael Pawlyn jointly initiated the widely acclaimed Sahara Forest Project; the latest version of which was opened by the King of Jordan in 2017.
Prior to setting up Exploration, Michael Pawlyn worked with Grimshaw for ten years and was central to the team that designed the Eden Project. He is regularly booked as a keynote speaker on innovation and his TED talk has had over 2 million views. He has written two books - Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency (co-authored with Sarah Ichioka) and Biomimicry in Architecture – both of which have been the respective publisher’s best-selling title. In 2019 he jointly initiated ‘Architects Declare a Climate and Biodiversity Emergency’ – a global call to action which has spread to 28 countries with over 7,000 firms signed up.
Michael Pawlyn is an architect, writer and public speaker. He has been described as an expert in regenerative design and biomimicry. He established his firm Exploration Architecture in 2007 to focus on high performance buildings and solutions for the circular economy. The company has developed a ground-breaking office project, an ultra-low energy data centre, a zero waste textiles factory and progressive solutions for green cities. Michael Pawlyn jointly initiated the widely acclaimed Sahara Forest Project; the latest version of which was opened by the King of Jordan in 2017.
Prior to setting up Exploration, Michael Pawlyn worked with Grimshaw for ten years and was central to the team that designed the Eden Project. He is regularly booked as a keynote speaker on innovation and his TED talk has had over 2 million views. He has written two books - Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency (co-authored with Sarah Ichioka) and Biomimicry in Architecture – both of which have been the respective publisher’s best-selling title. In 2019 he jointly initiated ‘Architects Declare a Climate and Biodiversity Emergency’ – a global call to action which has spread to 28 countries with over 7,000 firms signed up.
Milica Apostolovic is a sustainability and resilience consultant specializing in terrestrial nature-based solutions. She has worked in over 20 countries in the last decade, spanning across East Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Over the past three years, Milica has been managing the Natural Capital Laboratory, a research project that aims to restore 100 acres of forests in the Scottish Highlands and reintroduce lost species, while also acting as an on-site laboratory for identifying, quantifying and valuing the impacts of ecosystem restoration. Prior to joining AECOM, Milica worked as a consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) on forest landscape restoration, urban forestry, and mechanisms for monitoring the state of world’s forests. Milica was also the technical lead behind the WWF/FIDIC Playbook for Nature-Positive Infrastructure Development, an award-winning guide for integration of different nature-based solutions across multiple infrastructure sectors that is now part of UN’s global course on sustainable infrastructure.
With over 20 years’ experience in the packaging industry, working in manufacturing, design, with Proctor & Gamble and in food retail with Sainsbury’s, Marks and Spencer and Prêt, Paula joined the WWF in 2019 as part of the specialist technical team supporting the ambitious Tesco partnership.
As a Senior Policy Adviser, she is involved in policy thinking relating to wider resources and waste issues including a global treaty to combat plastic pollution, supporting a shift to a circular economy and advocating for ambitious domestic policy measures to tackle the impacts of resource consumption. She played a leading role in influencing Government to adopt Greener UK’s priority amendment for the Resource and Waste chapter of the Environment Act. She is the current Chair of the Wildlife and Countryside Link’s Circular Economy Working Group, an adviser on UKRI’s Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge and was appointed as the joint eNGO representative on the pEPR Scheme Administrator Interim Steering Group.
Dr Ramit Debnath is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Social Design at the University of Cambridge. He is the director of the Cambridge Collective Intelligence & Design group. His interdisciplinary research integrates engineering and computational social sciences with systems thinking, socio-technical design, and behavioural interventions to address barriers to climate action. Using a social design lens, he focuses on how individual behaviours influence collective decision-making dynamics and explores the potential of emergent AI to replicate these mechanisms to solve global challenges. Ramit is a fellow and director of studies in design at Churchill College; he teaches mathematics to design students and is passionate about leading the polymath revolution at Cambridge.
Samir Whitaker is Biodiversity Lead Specialist at Ørsted, a renewable energy developer, supporting the business to meet its commitment to have a net positive impact on biodiversity – delivering an overall benefit for nature in the areas we work in. This involves working with project teams to develop and integrate project biodiversity action plans, and working with a range of organisations to plan, deliver and monitor the biodiversity initiatives within these plans.
Samir started off in engineering consultancy conducting impact assessments and ran environmental field projects in India for a number of years. Following a master’s degree in Conservation Leadership he worked in the environmental conservation sector managing cross-sector partnerships for nature. He joined Ørsted in 2022 and has recently completed an MBA where he focussed on measuring and mainstreaming corporate sustainability commitments. His interests centre around the pivotal role the corporate sector plays in delivering solutions for the global climate-nature crisis.
Sevra is the Director of Architecture Design and Fashion, the British Council, and Commissioner of the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. She is an experienced architect, design advocate and leader in design for social innovation. Sevra studied architecture and urban design and worked in professional practice for over ten years in the US, the UK and Finland before moving to roles focused on design enabling.
Previous roles include Head of Learning at the Design Museum and Director of Design at the RSA. At the RSA she developed design research and design education programmes focused on design for positive social, environmental and economic impact. She has worked on a number of projects exploring and promoting the journey toward a more sustainable future and a circular economy. She speaks and writes frequently about the role of design in an increasingly complex world and in the context of the climate emergency.
Sille Krukow is a globally recognized expert in Behavioral Design, Nudging, and consumer communication, with a strong focus on design elements that measurably change consumer decisions. With over 15 years of pioneering work, she has become a leading authority in designing behavior change interventions that influence how consumers engage with products and environments. Her expertise spans key design aspects such as color psychology, iconography, packaging aesthetics, labeling strategies, and in-store design—ensuring that visual cues effectively guide consumer behavior. A key focus of Sille’s work is designing for zero-emission choices, leveraging behavioral insights to create sustainable design solutions that encourage greener consumer behaviors. Through thoughtful strategic design interventions, she helps brands and organizations nudge consumers toward lower-impact choices, from eco-friendly packaging to energy-efficient product selections.
Sille’s impressive portfolio includes collaborations with prestigious organizations like the European Commission, Procter & Gamble, Heineken, and Electrolux, where she applies design-driven insights to create impactful and sustainable solutions. Beyond her consultancy work, she is a respected academic, sharing her expertise as a guest lecturer at renowned institutions such as Northern Arizona University, Pratt Institute, and the University of St. Gallen.
With a background in advertising, Simeon joined Faith In Nature in 2017 and has spent his time since reimagining what it means to be a green company in today's world.
In 2022, Faith In Nature became the first company in the world to make Nature a director - giving the natural world a voice and a vote in all of its decision making.
The entire process has been open sourced on Faith In Nature's site so that other companies can do the same and he continues to share learnings from the idea on natureontheboard.com
Sophie has been a campaigner and leader in sustainable and circular design for nearly 30 years. Her passion for garbology (exploring human behaviours by digging in the rubbish) and belief that waste is a design flaw started early and still drives her curiosity, and she is often found peering into waste bins.
Her design studio, Thomas.Matthews, was an early pioneer in creating exhibitions, packaging, and signage using waste and sustainable materials from 1997. She is the only designer in the UK to be honoured as a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Waste Management.
In 2012, Sophie set up and ran The Great Recovery project with the RSA and InnovateUK, taking over 1,000 designers to waste sites to see where their products die and to rethink design using circular principles. Since then, she has worked with the industry to look at how everything - from oil rigs, sofas, shoes, and mobile phones - can be designed for reuse and recovery. She works with businesses to radically reconsider material use through design research and innovation.
In 2022, she co-founded the climate-tech venture studio etsaW, which supports and builds innovation in the transformation of waste streams into new materials and helps set up new businesses that exploit their use.
Dr Stephanie Hare is a researcher, broadcaster and author focused on technology, politics and history.
She co-presents “Artificial Intelligence: Decoded” on BBC television and contributes to the BBC World Service programme “Business Matters”.
Her first book, 'Technology Is Not Neutral: A Short Guide to Technology Ethics', was named a Financial Times Best Technology Book of summer 2022, and her writing has featured in the Financial Times, The Washington Post, the Guardian/Observer, the Harvard Business Review, WIRED and Computer Weekly.
She has worked at Accenture, Palantir, and Oxford Analytica; held the Alistair Horne Visiting Fellowship at St Antony’s College, Oxford; and earned a PhD and MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a BA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, including a year at the Université de la Sorbonne (Paris IV).
Thomas Heatherwick is one of the world’s most inventive and celebrated designers, whose work is characterised by its originality, diversity and humanity.
His studio was founded in 1994 to bring together architecture, urban planning, product design and interiors into a single creative workspace. It is now an extraordinary organisation with 10 partners and 250 people dedicated to making the physical world that surrounds us more joyful and engaging.
Some of the studio’s designs include the 2012 Olympic Cauldron; Coal Drops Yard in King’s Cross; Google’s first ground-up campus in California; Little Island, a park set over the Hudson River in New York; the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town; and Azabudai Hills, a new neighbourhood in Tokyo.
From their studios in London and Shanghai, the team is currently working on over 30 projects in ten countries, including Seoul’s Nodeul Island; London Olympia; the new Changi Airport Terminal 5 with KPF; and MixC, the new district for Xian in China.
Thomas is a global advocate for human-centred architecture, campaigning against soulless new buildings, and calling for more interesting cities that put the public first. These ideas are captured in his bestselling book ‘Humanise: A Maker’s Guide to Building Our World’, published worldwide in multiple languages and editions.
Thomas and his team also run one of the largest educational programmes of any single art or design company, inspiring young people aged 10-14 to see themselves as creative.
Thomas has been appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, a Royal Academician and in 2004 became the youngest Royal Designer for Industry.
Tori Tsui is a climate justice campaigner and author. She is a Senior Advisor for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and Climate Justice Lead for Brian Eno’s Earth Percent. Her debut book ‘It’s Not Just You’ was shortlisted for the Wainwright prize.
Global environment and Climate. In this role, she is responsible for Schneider’s environmental strategy and decarbonization roadmap. With 15 years of experience on climate change mitigation and adaptation in both developed and emerging markets, Vanessa has a deep understanding of energy transitions, and expertise across public and private sectors - from climate policy with the French Ministry of Energy to Microsoft and now Schneider Electric.
Prior to joining Schneider Electric, Vanessa was at Microsoft between 2015 and as Director of Energy Innovation and Impact; her group charted the way for Microsoft to be carbon negative by 2030. She started her career at the French Ministry of Finance, was part of the French climate change negotiation team, and then shifted to private equity finance of green infrastructure acting as Director of Strategy at Centuria Capital, where she developed the green infrastructure portfolio of the global asset manager and advisory company (USD $15B AUM).
Vanessa is an US department International Visitor Leadership Program alumni (2013), holds a master degree from Sciences-Po Paris, MBA from ESCP Paris, and graduated from Ecole nationale d’administration. She is an executive-in-residence at Insead and was an Assistant Professor at Sciences Po from 2010 to 2014. She holds French, American, and Indian nationality and fluent in French, English, and Italian.