Education

Mette Kirk is Symolem’s Senior Consultant for Circular Textiles and Recycling Systems and a contributing researcher to our teaching programme on textile-to-textile recycling. She brings a distinctive combination of hands-on textile recycling expertise and deep regulatory knowledge, guiding organisations by bridging industry realities with emerging regulatory requirements — from concept to implementation.

Her experience covers the full textile-to-textile recycling value chain, from collection and sorting infrastructure to fibre opening, recycling, yarn spinning, fabric production and downstream manufacturing. She has led the development of data models, traceability systems and compliance frameworks addressing ESPR, EPR and Green Claims requirements, and has worked directly with recyclers, manufacturers and brands. Her Master’s thesis served as a core research contribution to the SorTex project, investigating how collection systems, citizen behaviour, material design and classification systems affect the quality and recyclability of textile waste. The findings were published as a best-practice guide on the SorTex knowledge base and are now shaping how collection and sorting systems are developed across the Nordics.

She is also certified in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), including impact calculations, result analysis and application in ESG reporting and comparative decision-making, with a particular focus on textile recycling systems. Beyond her project work, she is regularly invited to speak nationally and internationally for private, public and EU institutions.

Education: Bachelor’s in Fashion Design and Business with major in Sustainability; Master’s in Design Management with major in Circular Design Processes; Continuing Education in Applied LCA: Calculation, Impact Assessment and ESG Application.

Previous associations: NewRetex, Think Design Interventions, Sustaina Company, Zara. EU and innovation projects: SorTex, STREP, Closing Loops, Fashion for Good.

Nastassia Ramazankhani is Symolem's Principal Sustainability Consultant and a contributing researcher on measurement, reporting and disclosure. She brings more than ten years of senior ESG and sustainability experience across fashion and textiles, beauty and cosmetics, raw materials and food and agriculture. At The Body Shop she managed supplier due diligence across more than one thousand natural and synthetic raw materials and minerals, implemented EUDR compliance tooling, and led regenerative agriculture programmes across supply chains in Peru, Ghana, Switzerland and Kenya. She previously spent four years at The Sustainable Angle helping lead the Future Fabrics Expo and delivering sustainable materials research for luxury fashion clients, and has worked as a senior ESG consultant in the United Arab Emirates advising clients across the GCC.

In our teaching she covers what industry-grade measurement, reporting and disclosure actually looks like inside a global brand — how due diligence data is collected, verified and disclosed under CSRD, EUDR and adjacent regimes, and how that connects to Digital Product Passport data expectations. She has taught as a supporting lecturer at the University of the Arts London.

Education: MA Sustainability, Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London; BA Textile Design.

Ayesha Naeem is Symolem's Senior Consultant for Carbon Accounting and Product Carbon Footprint, and a contributing researcher to our teaching on measuring product carbon footprint. She combines a mechatronics engineering background with hands-on delivery of product carbon footprint quantification under ISO 14067, PAS 2050 and the GHG Protocol, organisational GHG accounting under ISO 14064, and logistics emissions frameworks including GLEC and ISO 14083.

She has built carbon calculators, emissions analytics and ESG rating systems for fashion brands and their supply chains, and designed a CSRD and ESRS-aligned sustainability reporting platform. In our teaching she leads sessions on how to construct a defensible product carbon footprint from primary and secondary data, where the standard methodologies converge and diverge, and how PCF outputs are used inside Digital Product Passport data structures and downstream disclosure.

Education: MSc Mechatronics Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology (2020); BSc Mechatronics Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology (2016).

Lavinia Fernandes is Symolem's founder and a contributing researcher on Digital Product Passports. She was the founder of Blu-label, one of the first Digital Product Passports released to market, launched in 2019 and endorsed by London College of Fashion at the Sustainable Fashion Industry Forum in 2020 — years before the European Commission published the ESPR proposal that would make product passports mandatory across the European Union.

She now sits on the UN/CEFACT UNTP Supply Chain Working Group defining the technical standards underpinning Digital Product Passport implementation worldwide, and has spent the past year inside that process working to keep the cost of compliance to a minimum and to advocate for the fashion industry in the global standard design. In our teaching she covers the ten-year arc of Digital Product Passports — from voluntary industry pilots to ESPR delegated acts — including data architecture, identifier choices, verification, and how brands, retailers and manufacturers should read the regulation now emerging around them.

Education: Executive MBA Supply Chain Management, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London; MA Fashion Journalism, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London.