Go Full Circle presenter bios
Marty Rowell
Marty is an eco-preneur with deep practical circular economy knowledge, skills and experience in delivering initiatives with environmental, social and financial benefits. With over 20 years of experience in fostering innovation, new product development, commercial management, strategy and go-to-market implementation, across start-up, SME and corporate environments, he has a wide breadth of experience to draw upon.
Following the ABC’s War on Waste in 2017, Marty identified an opportunity to apply his experience and skills to tackle the ever-growing issue of single-use waste. And in 2018, Marty Co-founded The Cup Exchange - starting with a blank whiteboard and designing a 100% circular economy process and system to eliminate the need for single-use paper cups.
As an early-stage business adopting circular economy principles and putting them into action, he quickly gained significant investor support, free media and PR, and most importantly corporate sponsorships, local business participation and consumer adoption.
In 2020, Marty joined the CEV board to help drive a faster transition to circularity by sharing his first-hand practical experience of what works, what doesn’t and how to successfully implement circular initiatives.
In addition to keynote speaking, he now helps business owners and managers adopt and implement more sustainable and profitable business practices using circular economy principles, in conjunction with up-skilling staff through the delivery of engaging circular economy training through a practical lens.
Yvonne Barrett
Yvonne is a sustainability professional with over a decade’s experience across multiple sectors and geographies. Her focus is on helping clients navigate their sustainability journey to become a positive influence in their community at the same time as improving business performance and building healthy profits.
Yvonne has helped organisations from start-ups to multinationals, government agencies to corporates embed sustainability into their operations, demonstrate their commitment to responsible business practices and successfully communicate their achievements and challenges.
As the Principal of Responsible Business Consultants, Yvonne is currently working with several SMEs to improve their environmental performance. Whether it is using the ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems Standard or the B Corporation Certification framework, Yvonne helps SMEs identify their material risks, opportunities and impacts and helps develop strategies to improve their performance.
Yvonne is also mentoring New Zealand SMEs as part of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise Business For Good program.
Her style is collaborative and she loves nothing more than being part of the team. Before founding Responsible Business Consultants, Yvonne spent many years delivering sustainability strategy and implementation services as a consultant in top-tier professional advisory and audit firms and boutique consultancies in Australia and London, UK.
She began her career communicating and delivering innovative government programs whilst at the Environment Protection Authority, Victoria.
Sara Redmond-Neal
Sara is the founder of Small Mighty CSR, helping small businesses become people, and planet, positive by tapping into their sustainability superpowers to build a thriving business.
Following 15 years as a sought adviser and consultant to businesses and government, including top ASX-listed businesses across sectors, Sara decided to bring her expertise to small business entrepreneurs - people with the passion, innovation and agility to tackle the world's biggest challenges.
With a particular expertise in sustainable procurement and evaluating suppliers' sustainability performance over the entire supply chain, she saw small businesses struggling to meet ESG expectations, and was inspired to provide resources to support time-strapped business owners.
Sara also has a passion for sustainability education, with a depth of experience providing in-house workshops to procurement, accounting, risk and sustainability professionals and collaborating with the University of Cambridge for over 5 years to deliver exclusive sustainability leadership seminars to hundreds of international executives, directors and managers. Her focus is now on making that education more accessible in the digital world.
She also has a long track record of working with local government through the ECO-Buy program, having worked with participating councils to apply sustainable procurement since joining ECO-Buy in 2011 through its delivery via Net Balance and EY. This also included working with a group of councils and the Supply Chain Sustainability School to deliver the Local Government Sustainable Supply Initiative via a Collaborative Councils grant.
Evelina Lundqvist
Evelina Lundqvist is a sustainable business development consultant, communicator, and podcaster, born in Sweden and based in Austria. She's an avid zero waste, circular economy, interculturality, and antiracism advocate - and a serial co-founder, co-creator, and award-winning social entrepreneur.
Evelina has 20+ years of experience as a sustainability consultant in business development, communication, project design and management, workshop design and facilitation, public speaking, moderation, and writing.
In 2009 she co-founded the environmental and social impact agency, The Good Tribe, which remains her base for working with clients and on her own initiatives and projects. Evelina holds an MBA in Business Ethics and CSR from Danube University, Austria.
In the zero waste and circular economy domain, Evelina works with:
- business development, strategy, and communication
- podcast concept and production
- project design and management
- workshop design and facilitation, moderation, keynotes, and lecturing (online and offline)
- text writing and editing.
In addition, Evelina has recently started the training to become a TRUE advisor. Some of her recent clients include Impact Hub Vienna, Östersunds kommun, Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation, Dass Gramm Akademie, GRUDE Interreg, and many more.
Evelina has been the co-founder or co-creator of:
- Zero Waste Business Model Canvas: co-creator (2021 to present)
- Åre kulturarena: co-founder, project coordinator (2020 to present)
- MethodKit for Sustainable Organisations: co-author (2020 to present)
- Love Zero Waste: podcast co-creator, host (2019 to present)
- Intercultural Cities Sweden: co-founder, secretary (2018 to present)