Kim Poldner

About Kim Poldner

Kim Poldner is a professor, entrepreneur and author specialized in sustainable business, circular fashion and regenerative leadership. Her unique combination of academic excellence and entrepreneurial zest ensures a sparkling stage presence. Her students have given her the nickname Miss Frizzle and the Magic School Bus as she always takes her audience on a figurative journey towards more positive realities and sustainable futures. With passion, humor, and thought-provoking facts she will seduce even the biggest climate-denier to become a changemaker in his own company. Her teaching was awarded with the Green Teacher Award in 2018.

Kim serves as Chair of the research group Circular Business at The Hague University of Applied Sciences and is affiliated with Wageningen University & Research (WUR), the Netherlands where she founded the Circular Fashion Lab and developed the edX MOOC ‘Design, Science and Value in a Sustainable Clothing Industry’. She is also a visiting professor at EDHEC Business School in Lille, France and at TIAS Business School in the Netherlands.

She graduated at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland: for her PhD project she longitudinally studied 58 sustainable entrepreneurs in the fashion industry. She initiated and organized the first edition of Un-Dress in 2012, named after her PhD dissertation: ‘Un-Dress – Stories of Ethical Fashion Entrepreneuring’. Since 2005, she teaches and gives keynotes around the world, specifically on sustainable fashion.

Before she embarked on an academic career, she was founder of the first eco fashion store in The Netherlands in 2005 and initiator of online platform ‘Eco Fashion World’. Her green wardrobe, including her up cycled wedding dress, was exhibited during the exhibition ‘Wear I Am’ in 2017. In 2020 she ran pop-up shop KLEER, an action research lab for circular business model innovation in fashion.

Kim’s activities have been covered in national media such as FD, NRC, Volkskrant, Telegraaf, AD, NU.nl and Trouw and she regularly invited for (media) interviews and podcasts. Her research has been published in academic top journals such as Organization and Business & Society. In 2021 she published the Routledge book ‘Circular Economy: Challenges and opportunities for ethical and sustainable business’.