Louise Nash

The CEO leveraging circular economy practices and principles to radically redesign the future of business.

Louise Nash is the founder and CEO of Circularity, New Zealand’s leading circular economy design consultancy dedicated to radically redesigning the future of business, by designing out waste, unlocking value from material flows and regenerating living systems to ensure our planet is maintained within 1.5 degrees of warming. Circularity has become a trusted partner of choice for governments, businesses, and innovators to move the theory in action across policy, resources, products, supply chains, and stakeholder relationships. Louise represented Aotearoa earlier this year at the World Expo in Dubai, speaking on a panel on eliminating food waste as part of the Food, Agriculture, and Livelihoods Week alongside the United Nations. Currently less than 10% of the world is circular, and the circular economy opportunity for Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland alone is valued at $8.8b by 2030. Given that 80% of the environmental impacts of our goods, products, and services are baked in at the design phase, Circularity aims to help businesses understand their impacts across entire organisations and supply chains to redesign our future to be circular.

Louise is also the co-founder of XLabs, New Zealand’s first circular economy training lab. Her team recently ran XLabs LIVE which brought together 15 business teams to develop circular solutions for complex problems, including the likes of Transpower, Silver Fern Farms, Beca, Lion, The Western Initiative, Downer, and food rescue service Rescued.

Louise’s career for 20 years saw her working with brands and businesses across Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States, where she developed growth strategies through insights, human connections, and digital technologies. Through the completion of a Masters of Technological Futures, she studied the technological opportunity for the circular economy and developed the Circular by Design methods. She used these six methods with businesses to enable them to access the $4.5 trillion global circular economy opportunity while reducing their emissions.