The Matcha Initiative
Karin is a Senior Lecturer within the Division of Industrial Design. With over two decades of experience as a design practitioner across Europe and Asia, Karin combines strategic design consultancy with a passion for impact-driven projects. Before joining NUS, she led a multidisciplinary design team at Chemistry, an award-winning innovation design consultancy with offices in Singapore and Amsterdam, where she is still a Partner. Prior to that she worked with renowned organisations such as IDEO (SG), Tama BI Art University (JP), KesselsKramer (UK), and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (NL).
As a designer, Karin focuses on the role of design in transitioning toward a just, sustainable, and regenerative future. She is particularly interested in design for a circular economy, systems transformation, and planet-centred participatory design. Karin has worked extensively with both public and private sector organisations to accelerate their transition toward a human and planet-centred future.
Sharing about my first hand experiences working with large multinationals, public service agencies or start ups.
In recent years, the focus of my work has expanded from human-centric to planet-centric design.
I strongly believe that design has to play a major role in the critical transformation ahead of us to create a more inclusive, just, and regenerative society. I believe that our job as designers is not only to craft the products and services, but also to envision new ways of working for and with communities, organisations, and businesses. The role of designers as facilitators to enable participatory transformations with stakeholders is critical in bringing such new visions to life.
I had the great opportunity to work closely with the team behind Circo, a circular design and business methodology based on an academic framework developed by the Technical University Delft. Circo translates academic research into actionable design strategies and business models for both designers and businesses, enabling circular transformation.
As certified trainer and head of the Singapore Hub for Circo I facilitate Masterclasses on Circular Business Models and Circular Design to accelerate organisations‘ transition towards a circular, regenerative, and just economy.
I am also a regular keynote speaker and subject matter expert on human- and planet-centred Innovation and Design.
Very often the first hurdle is a lack of awareness and understanding of key decisions makers.
Sustainability as a topic can be overwhelming and many organisations are risk averse towards change, sticking to compliance. In order to help organisations, trade organisations or public service agencies start their journey towards circular transformation me and my team at Chemistry are providing hands on circular design sprint programmes that create a safe space to explore Circular Economy as a business solution, providing actionable design strategies and business models that companies can test and apply on real-life business challenges - rethinking and designing their products and services.
Since 2021 my company Chemistry is a certified B Corporation. This decision was a ground up initiative carried by the team members as much as by the Directors and partners. As a certified BCorp we fundamentally believe in the power and ability of business for good, moving beyond profitability towards a more holistic and meaningful impact.