Dr. Katherine Whalen

Sustainable business at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden

Dr. Katherine Whalen is a researcher of Sustainable Business at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden. She holds a PhD in Industrial Environmental Economics from the International institute for Industrial Environmental Economics, Lund University, Sweden. Her PhD, which focused on circular business models, was part of the MISTRA REES project, a four year research program aimed at advancing the transition of the Swedish manufacturing industry towards a circular and sustainable economy. Katherine is internationally recognized as a circular economy expert, having contributed to multiple EU-funded consortium projects including the development of educational content for the online course ‘Circular Economy - Sustainable Materials Management’ and for the start-up coaching program 'C-BOOT/ Bootcamp for Starting Entrepreneurs in a Circular Economy'. She is also host of the Getting in the Loop podcast, which has been downloaded over 39,500 times, and creator of two circular economy games, which are used in over 30 countries. Katherine previously led the Circular Design Program at Circle Economy (Netherlands) where she developed and facilitated workshops for the Dutch manufacturing industry on circular design and business models. She holds a MSc in Industrial Design Engineering from TU Delft (NL).