Founder
Lavinia Fernandes
ESPR advisory built from inside the industry it will transform
The Vision
Symolem is an independent global sustainability advisory for fashion. We work with brands, retailers and manufacturers on product compliance, supplier traceability, materials circularity and Digital Product Passports, either as an external sustainability function or alongside the team you already have.
It was founded by Lavinia Fernandes, who spent twenty years in fashion. She began as a wholesale executive in luxury showrooms, moved into buying and e-commerce, then took an Executive MBA in Supply Chain Management. Those two roles sit either side of a Digital Product Passport: the buying decision that lets a product in, and the product page that has to carry its claims.
The Authority
In 2019 she founded Blu-Label, launching a blockchain-based digital product passport five years before ESPR made them law. She then moved into climate finance and carbon accounting, and founded Symolem as an advisory practice in 2022.
She delivered the impact framework for the Zayed Sustainability Prize 2026, and is the author of the Human Impact Equivalence Framework®. She sits on the UN/CEFACT UNTP Supply Chain Working Group and is Vice-Chair of Landfills2Landmarks, a UN-accredited NGO in Ghana.
CTO, Symolem-ID
Artur Synowiec
An experienced software engineer with more than twenty-five years of delivery across government and big media. He works across the full stack with particular depth in graph technologies — the data backbone of the Symolem-ID verification layer, where product identity, supply chain relationships and evidence have to be linked, queried and proven.
Academic in Residence
Dr Vinayak Sharma, PhD
PhD in Circular Economy from the University of Exeter. His research examined how multinational enterprises build the capabilities required to integrate social value into circular economy transitions, drawing on more than fifty C-suite interviews. His presence ensures what Symolem publishes, teaches and validates meets a scholarly standard.
The policies, statements and disclosures that govern how Symolem Limited and Symolem-ID Ltd operate are published on our governance page.
Governance and Disclosures →
