Dan Fitzgerald is the Sr. Director of Product Sustainability at Stanley Black & Decker and is responsible for identifying, defining, and facilitating strategies and action plans associated with improving the sustainable performance of products across the corporation. He leads the Product Pillar of the Corporate Social Responsibility strategy which includes goals to develop new products that address unmet societal needs and to improve the impacts of existing products across their lifecycle. He joined Stanley Black & Decker in 2006 and spent his first ten years at the company in a product stewardship role providing safety and environmental compliance support for the Power Tools Business before moving into the Corporate-wide Product Sustainability Role. Dan holds a B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland – College Park.
Chris Koffler is the Technical Director for the Americas of Sphera’s Sustainability Consulting practice. In this role he is responsible for the quality of all sustainability consulting projects across the region, methodological development, and project oversight. In addition, he is the primary lead in selected areas such as the automotive sector.
Chris is a firm believer in the importance of high quality and accurate data to inform product design and strategy development towards a more sustainable future. Over the last 17 years, Chris has worked on hundreds of Life Cycle Assessment and Carbon Footprint projects across a wide variety of industry sectors, including but not limited to the automotive, metals & mining, building & construction, chemical, electronics, consumer goods, packaging, textile, and financial sectors, either in a project manager, quality assurance manager, or independent reviewer role.
Chris received his Doctorate in Engineering from the Darmstadt University of Technology in 2007. His PhD work was on Automotive Product Life Cycle Assessment and was carried out at the Volkswagen Group Research Department in Wolfsburg, Germany. He came to the United States in 2010 for his current position at Sphera (formerly thinkstep, formerly PE Americas). Chris has published numerous papers in the field of Life Cycle Assessment and frequently provides his expertise in peer and critical reviews.
Chris Wirth is vice president of corporate affairs for AMP Robotics. Wirth brings more than 25 years of business-to-business (B2B) experience at companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies in the technology, sustainability, government, finance, and industrial sectors. Prior to AMP, he held roles in marketing at Flex Ltd (NASDAQ: FLEX) incubating an internal international energy start-up and was vice president of marketing for Spruce Finance (formerly Clean Power Finance), a solar energy financier backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Google Ventures.
Carlos graduated with a degree in Chemical Engineering from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. He worked in industry before moving to the United Kingdom, to do his Ph.D at the University of Cambridge. During his doctoral research and subsequently as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate, he developed the basis of the Enval process to recycle plastic aluminium laminate pouches, sachets, tubes, etc.
As a result, Carlos founded Enval where he is CEO. The Company now has a commercial plant recycling laminates in the UK and is in the process of installing further units in other locations. Enval has also started to develop recycling processes for other materials, creating a link between the packaging world and the waste handling sector.
Brad Price joined New Energy Risk in May 2021 as principal engineer and was promoted to managing director of technical due diligence in 2022. Brad brings a breadth of knowledge in the chemical process industry related to the design, commissioning, startup, optimization, and day-to-day operations of multibillion-dollar petrochemical assets. He is also an expert in the field of process safety management. Brad has a passion for technology development, especially related to the advancement of the circular economy.
Prior to joining NER, Brad worked for a major multinational petrochemical company. His varied career has included the design and operation of many of the largest and most complex petrochemical processes in the world, including ethylene, polyethylene, metathesis, hydrogenation, and 1-hexene technology. He has worked both domestically and overseas on a five-year international expatriate assignment. His combination of both technical expertise and hands-on operating experience makes him an asset to the NER team. Brad was deeply involved in the development of his previous company’s circular plastics business, including the first commercial trial to produce new “virgin” plastic from waste plastic.
Jeremy DeBenedictis has been leading the development, operation, and commercialization of the Company’s Advanced Recycling technology since 2011. He is a co-inventor to Alterra’s continuous thermochemical liquefaction process with four U.S. pending patents. His passion is mentoring future leaders to carrying on the responsibility of creating a cleaner planet for future generations. Jeremy earned his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Dayton and an MBA in Banking & Finance from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University.
As the Strategic Initiatives Manager at Eastman, Holli Alexander translates the complexity of sustainability into action. She has worked closely within the plastic recycling industry for the last decade supporting collaborative system change. Holli represents Eastman in a variety of external organizations including the US Plastics Pact, the Recycling Partnership, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, and the Association of Plastic Recyclers. She currently serves as an officer for the PLASTICS Industry Association and helped found their Advanced Recycling Committee. She launched the ANSI US Technical Advisory Group for the ISO committee on Chain of Custody and co-authored a chapter on mass balance in Current Topics in the Circular Economy of Polymers which was published by the American Chemistry Society in 2021.
Jesus Atias is the North America Sustainability manager for Packaging & Specialty Plastics. Jesus is responsible for expanding the Hefty® EnergyBag® program, which represents a collaboration with strategic customer Reynolds Consumer Products and participating communities, diverting more plastics from landfill by converting them to valuable energy resources. He focuses on program growth and identifying partners across the value chain, including new end markets and applications. He is managing Dow’s responsibilities as the first Hefty® EnergyBag® program launches in Canada.
Jeremy DeBenedictis has been leading the development, operation, and commercialization of the Company’s Advanced Recycling technology since 2011. He is a co-inventor to Alterra’s continuous thermochemical liquefaction process with four U.S. pending patents. His passion is mentoring future leaders to carrying on the responsibility of creating a cleaner planet for future generations. Jeremy earned his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Dayton and an MBA in Banking & Finance from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University.
Tim Buwalda is a Principal at Circular Matters, a consulting firm dedicated to bringing about the circular economy. We work with companies, government entities, and industry organizations to make real progress toward sustainability goals. Tim has over 25 years experience in waste reduction and materials recovery, specializing in policy approaches, infrastructure planning and analysis, and recovered materials processing technologies. Tim holds a Bachelor’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Florida, with a specialization in plastics.
Shannon Crawford is the director of recycling and environmental policy at WM, where she works with the government affairs team to coordinate responses to recycling legislation, regulations, and policy impacting WM operations. Previously, she worked as the director of state government affairs at the Plastics Industry Association, overseeing the association’s response to extended producer responsibility and recycled content legislation. Crawford started her career at SWANA, where she advanced to the position of manager of government relations.
