Benjamin holds a Bachelor’s degree in Finance and an M.B.A from the University of Akron. In his current role, Benjamin leads the strategic consulting division of Smithers Information in North America. This division works with clients to gather a deep understanding of their business goals, and to develop in-depth research programs to provide visibility into markets and niches. This process is designed to dig deep into a wide variety of industries and topics, gather insights, and provide an unbiased view of the key challenges faced by our clients. These efforts allow our clients to evaluate their strategic plans and make decisions based upon credible data and analysis, supported by robust research conclusions and recommendations.
Paula is a Senior Project Director at the Center for the Circular Economy – Closed Loop Partners’ innovation center that leverages research and pre-competitive collaborations to support the transition to the circular economy. Her work focuses on evaluating new technologies and markets to drive investment towards solutions that are both safe and circular and to accelerate their commercialization.
Paula has worked across sectors and along the supply chain in various operations and marketing roles. She began her career in water policy and later launched a startup that upcycled textile waste and employed women coming home from prison. Before joining Closed Loop Partners, she worked in operations and sourcing roles for brands including Nike, Amazon, and Starbucks.
Paula received her B.A. in Consumer Behavior from Cal Berkeley and her MBA and MS from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and School for Environment and Sustainability.
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.
Bio coming soon
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.
Waste not, want not? I help fight climate change and accelerate circular economy by developing chemical recycling of waste plastic. My mission is the development and commercialization of processing technologies that enable efficient, safe and sustainable use of waste plastic as raw material to new plastics and chemicals. My current main tasks are building and sustaining strategic partnerships in the field of chemical recycling technologies and especially related to the commercialization of Alterra Energy's proprietary liquefaction technology in Europe.
I'm interested in building networks that support making chemical recycling viable from technical, commercial as well as regulatory standpoints. Please contact me with cooperation proposals at outi(dot)teras(at)neste(dot)com.
Entrepreneur passionate about advancing the circular economy of plastics through new technologies, and fostering industry and academic collaboration.
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.
10+ years of national and international experience in R&D, product development and innovation, with a strong passion for organic chemistry. Experience in different industries (i.e. automotive, footwear, insulation, pharma), always with the idea to create value for both the company and the client/customer. If you are a big company or an early-stage startup, you must have in mind that it is not just a matter of finding proper technical solutions, but also how to put them in place.
A well-known leader in the government affairs arena for more than 20 years, Dan has worked within the bottled water, credit card, healthcare and information management industries. He is particularly passionate about environmental, sustainability and packaging issues and has lobbied extensively in those areas at the state and federal levels. He leads the efforts of AMERIPEN – the American Institute for Packaging and the Environment – to develop and advocate positions for the U.S. packaging industry on issues related to packaging and the environment, using sound science and a philosophy of material neutrality.
Regarding the current clean agenda you sent over, it looks good and glad to see it appears you're having some (CPGs and/or others) speak to their need for AR to help meet recycled content goals and mandates. As far as the placeholder it looks like you have at the end of the agenda about standardizing recycling requirements, it's a great subject and AR totally ties into that. I could conceivably help you flush that out and even moderate if you want.
