Manuel Bickel
Wuppertal Institute | Co-Head of Research Unit Product & Consumption Systems
Expertise That Drives Impact
Speakers & Expert Committee
The Expert Committee and the speakers of the Circular Design Summit combine strategic expertise with international experience. Together, they set impulses that drive innovation and support organisations in making future-defining decisions. Based on circular principles.
Speaker
The speakers of the Circular Design Summit stand for practical transformation and entrepreneurial clarity. They demonstrate how circular design unlocks new potential for value creation, reduces risks and strengthens strategic capability. With insights from business, research and design, they offer guidance to help you drive complex change within your organisation.
How can material flows be used efficiently, and systems be designed to close loops? That’s the question Manuel Bickel explores. At the Wuppertal Institute, he researches the circular design of product and service systems. His work also focuses on sustainability assessment, resource efficiency, ecodesign, digitalisation and industrial applications.
Christian Eichenberger
Rent.Group | CEO
Christian Eichenberger demonstrates how circular business models work in practice. Through the Rent.Group, he connects the sharing economy with circular design – from event equipment to office furniture. His goal: to save resources, reduce energy consumption, and design products for multiple lifecycles.
Kristina Kölling
Tchibo | Head of Circularity & Environment
Kristina Kölling drives Tchibo’s shift towards circular business models. After years in product management, bringing more than 300 products to market, she now focuses on a key question: how can a mainstream retailer truly become circular? Through the Circular Solutions Lab, which she co-founded, she develops strategies that extend product lifecycles and connect circular design with scalable circular services.
Paula Holzhauser
Textile Designer & German Design Graduate 2025
Paula Holzhauser explores how circular design can address textile overproduction. Her project You may also like transforms industrial leftover yarns into new functional materials, revealing the design potential of pre-consumer waste. By letting residual colours shape the pattern, she turns discarded material into a resource for future-proof textile systems. In 2025, she was part of the GDG exhibition “Dare to Design – Spaces of Care”.
Rob Hopkins
Keynote Speaker | Co-Founder, Transition Network & Transition Town Totnes
Rob Hopkins is one of the leading voices of the global Transition movement. In his keynote, he explores how imagination and community can lay the foundations for circular and resilient economies. As an author, speaker, and trainer, he inspires people to design the future with creativity, courage, and connection.
Moderator: Patrick Hypscher
Circularity.fm | Circular Business Strategist & Podcaster
Patrick Hypscher supports companies on their path towards the circular economy – from regulatory requirements to strategic circularity development. Through his podcast Circularity.fm, he offers perspectives on Product-as-a-Service, recycling, and circular product design. Previously, he advised industrial companies in Berlin’s InDiCE programme and helped scale the Product-as-a-Service model BlueMovement at Bosch Siemens Hausgeräte.
Leo Lübke
COR Sitzmöbel | Managing Partner
Leo Lübke stands for furniture that is part of a circular system. Under his leadership, COR designs durable pieces that can be repaired, reused, and reintegrated into material cycles. With initiatives such as COREVER, he shows how design takes responsibility and contributes to conserving resources.
Dr. Max Marwede
Circular Design Lab Fraunhofer IZM | Manager
Susanna Minato-Torkler
BDI-Circular Economy Initiative (BDI-ICE) | Project Speaker
Moderator: Martin Pauli
Arup | Global Circular Economy Services Leader
Martin Pauli drives circular strategies for the built environment at Arup. He works with public-sector clients and leading industry partners to redesign products, processes and business models for a circular future. Together with a global team and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, he developed the Circular Buildings Toolkit, now used across the construction value chain. His work shows how circular design accelerates innovation and sets new standards in architecture and industry.
Nikolai Pauli
Klett Liegenschaften Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH | Managing Director
Nikolai Pauli combines hands-on experience with architecture, energy efficiency and systems thinking. At the Klett Group, he is responsible for property management and develops solutions that translate future viability into practice. His focus is on making complex interconnections usable and keeping design processes open and adaptive. For him, circular design succeeds when materials, knowledge and rules circulate in equal measure.
Manuela Sánchez
Wayfinding und Editorial Designer
Manuela Sánchez works at the intersection of architecture, editorial design and visual communication, creating user-centred wayfinding systems that enhance navigation and strengthen placemaking. Her practice combines research-based methods with collaborative processes to make spaces more accessible. She approaches circular design as a process of awareness and learning: design should foster mindful engagement and a deeper connection between people and their environments.
Johannes Schmidt
Studio Schmidt | Designer & Gründer
Johannes Schmidt designs digital products and brands with a focus on making interactions more sustainable and circular. Through his research project, Eden OS, he explores how operating systems can handle information more thoughtfully and extend digital life cycles. His work connects design, technology, and entrepreneurship. It is shaped by collaborations with startups and global companies such as Google.
E-Lin Tan
BSH Hausgeräte GmbH | Global Head of BlueMovement
Jos Vlugter
Fraunhofer Institut | Circular Economy Consultant
Moderator: Dr. Katharina Weiss-Tuider
Eckart von Hirschhausen Foundation | Head of Communications
Dr Katharina Weiss-Tuider inspires as a host, speaker, and science communicator, by turning knowledge into impact – enabling future-ready decisions. As Communications Manager for the largest Arctic expedition of our time, she learned to “navigate” PR under extreme conditions. She led communications for the charitable foundation of Eckart von Hirschhausen, as well as the global food initiative Veganuary in Germany. Her award-winning non-fiction books have been translated internationally.
Expert Committee
The Expert Committee shapes the Circular Design Summit with vision and commitment. It curates the programme, selects the speakers and ensures that you encounter the key trends and perspectives in circular design.
Steffen Erath
Hansgrohe | Head of Innovation & Sustainability
Steffen Erath drives innovation and sustainability at Hansgrohe. He combines practice-oriented innovation management with a clear focus on circular design to show how companies can shape the future through circular strategies and the circular economy.
Anne Farken
Designworks | Associate Director Sustainability & Creative Consulting
Anne Farken is responsible for sustainability and creative consulting at Designworks. She systematically integrates sustainability into design processes and supports companies across industries in developing new, future-oriented business models – with a clear focus on the opportunities of circular design and innovation leadership.
Karel J. Golta
Indeed Innovation | CEO
Karel J. Golta is the founder and CEO of Indeed Innovation. He stands for sustainable transformation through design. With his holistic innovation processes, he combines ecological responsibility with economic impact to implement circular design and innovation leadership as the key success factors.
Bernd Müller
German Design Council | Director International Relations & Sustainability
Bernd Müller is responsible for international relations and sustainability at the German Design Council. With his experience at the interface of design, business and sustainability, he brings a global perspective and demonstrates how circular design drives transformation worldwide.
Alissa Ritter
Rosenthal | Corporate Sustainability Lead
As Sustainability Manager at Rosenthal, Alissa Ritter drives the further development of the traditional porcelain manufacturer. She optimises processes in a resource-efficient way, bundles knowledge within the company and firmly anchors sustainability across all areas – with a clear link to circular design and the circular economy.