Richard Brabec was born on 5 July 1966 in Kladno, Czech Republic. He graduated from the Faculty of Natural Science, Department of Geology, at Charles University, combined with foreign languages. He has held the position of director at the Czech-Moravian Commodity Stock Exchange Kladno, has worked in various positions in the financial section of the company Unipetrol, and operated as Chief Financial Officer in Spolana Neratovice and as CEO of Lovochemie company. Since 2007, he deals with issues relating to European and domestic legislation on the environment, particularly the issue of REACH, an integrated permit system and emission allowances. In elections to the Chamber of Deputies in October 2013, he was elected from the political Movement ANO 2011. On the 29th January 2014 he was appointed as Minister of the Environment by Milos Zeman, President of the Czech Republic at the time.

Vladislav Smrž was born in 1977. He graduated from the Socio-Economic Faculty of the University of JE Purkyne in Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic. He has worked in the chemical and automotive industries, where he was largely responsible for human resources, security, and asset management. Before joining the Ministry of the Environment (MoE), he worked as a personnel director at the Lovochemie Company. He is currently Deputy Minister for Section of Environmental Policy and International Relations at MoE. In his leisure time, he enjoys doing sports, especially skiing, and riding horses.

Ilcheong YI is Senior Research Coordinator in the Social Policy and Development Programme and the Social Dimensions of Sustainable Development Programme at UNRISD. Ilcheong was trained as a political scientist (B.A. and M.A. from the Department of Political Science, Seoul National University, Korea) and as a social policy analyst (D.Phil from Oxford University, UK). His specialization is in the issues of poverty, social policy, labour policy, social
economy, and the historical analysis of the economic and social development process.

Prior to joining UNRISD, Ilcheong was Associate Professor at Kyushu University, Japan (2004-2008), Korea Foundation Visiting Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Malaya, Malaysia (2003- 2004), and Visiting Research Fellow at the Stein Rokkan Centre, University of Bergen, Norway (2002-2003).

Harald Pilz served as Senior Consultant at Denkstatt from 1996 to 2014 and is now an independent cooperation partner of Denkstatt. He studied technical physics, mathematics, and technical environmental protection in Austria. His projects focus on sustainability assessment of product life-cycles, including LCA studies and cost-benefit analyses. Harald is also a trained moderator of stakeholder dialogues and a mediator for conflicts in the public sector.

Daniel Ortiz Martinz graduated as a Chemical Engineer from the University of São Paulo (Brazil) in 1998 and joined Solvay Indupa in 1999. For ten years he was involved with Customer Technical Services in South America in different flexible vinyl markets, especially compounds, sheets and paste PVC. In 2009 Daniel was transferred to SolVin SA in Brussels as a Technical Marketing & Development for Paste PVC. In 2015 he joined Inovyn as Head of Technical Marketing & Development for Specialty Vinyls. Daniel has a Master Degree in Marketing (2004) and a Master Science Degree in Nanosciences and Advanced Materials (2009).

Joe Papineschi has been a Director of circular economy policy, strategy and operations consultancy Eunomia Research & Consulting since 2002. Eunomia has been at the forefront of supporting the EU’s drive towards a more circular economy in both policy development and implementation, including the key projects on recycling targets, measurement, EPR, marine plastics pollution and microplastics.

Stefan Sommer has over 30 years of consulting, business development and general management experience gained at various leading chemical companies. Having served as CEO of Ticona Engineering Plastics, CEO of ASK Chemicals and President of DSM China, Mr. Sommer brings abundant industry and executive expertise to the management team.

Thorsten Beinke spent three years as Creative Director at Mobilcom, going on to be Head of Advertising at Terhurne. He then spent 6 years at Witex as Creative Director, during which he gained a Bachelor of Arts in Media Economics at the Fachhochschule Des Mittelstandes Bielefeld in Germany. He is currently based in Luxembourg as Senior Design Manager of Tarkett, a worldwide leader of innovative flooring and sports surface solutions that is committed to having a positive environmental impact.

Dr. Brigitte Dero holds a PhD in Sciences (Molecular Biology) from the University of Brussels (ULB) in Belgium. Early in her career she worked for a special programme of the World Health Organisation on tropical diseases before moving to the metals industry to work in the occupational health, safety and environment arenas and, subsequently, on waste management and recycling.

In June 1999 she joined the European Chemical Industry Council to manage the plastic additives sector groups , PVC stabilisers, plasticisers, flame retardants, antioxidants and food contact additives.

In December 2011 Brigitte became general manager of the European Council of Vinyl Manufacturers (ECVM).

In January 2014 she became general manager of VinylPlus the umbrella under which 200 companies from the PVC value chain (resin, chemical additives, and plastic converters) work together to increase the sustainability performance of PVC.

In 2012 she registered VinylPlus in the UN Registry of Commitments and engaged VinylPlus with UNEP/UNIDO. IN 2013, VinylPLus became a member of the UNIDO/UNEP Green industry platform, a global high-level, multi-stakeholder partnership to mobilise action on Green Industry around the world.

She is Belgian, married and has two sons. Brigitte is passionate about science & sustainability, women in chemistry & education. She supports the ‘Women in Green industry chapter’ of UNIDO/UNEP.