About Anna Brismar
Dr. Anna Brismar is the owner and founder of Green Strategy. Since 2012, Anna has worked as an independent consultant towards the global fashion industry, with clients in Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and Nigeria, to name some.
As senior consultant, Dr. Brismar offers high quality consultancy services and strategic products to fashion brands, apparel companies, retail chains, and textile organisations to advance and communicate their sustainability and circularity work more successfully.
Major contributions in the field
Over the last decade, Anna has made significant contributions in the field of sustainable and circular fashion. One of her first contributions was a new and comprehensive definition of sustainable fashion (in 2012), which has been widely quoted since. In the same year, she developed and launched the concept “Seven forms of sustainable fashion“, which comprises a circular diagram with seven segments, and an accompanying text. The concept “Seven forms…” has helped countless actors, from fashion brands and students to public organisations, to better understand the theoretical essence and practical implications of both sustainable and circular fashion.
During 2013, Anna worked intensively to explore the field of circular economy and how the “mindset of circularity” could be merged with the concept of sustainable fashion. Subsequently, in June 2014, she coined and defined the term “circular fashion“. In September 2014, Anna developed and organized the world’s first circular fashion event, Circular Fashion – Show and Talk 2014, held in central Stockholm. The following month, she founded the professional network Circular Fashion Network (which grew to comprise more than 100 professional members, mainly from Sweden but also a handful from other countries). For the network, she organized numerous physical events on circular fashion in Stockholm (in 2014 to 2016), including an event on circular fashion and biomimicry, and another on plastic pollution in the oceans. In autumn 2015, Anna launched the world’s first global online platform on circular fashion: Circularfashion.com. The platform was dedicated exclusively to circularity issues within the global fashion, apparel, and textile industry, and was instrumental in spreading the notion of circular fashion to a global audience. In January 2021, the platform was integrated into the website of Green Strategy (for practical purposes).
Professional and educational background
Dr. Anna Brismar has almost 20 years of experience as a consultant and researcher in the environmental and sustainability field. Before founding Green Strategy in 2012, she worked as sustainability consultant for various international organisations, such as the World Bank, Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and the European Parliament. In addition, she has international research experience from Stockholm Environment Institute in York, England, and from IIASA in Vienna, Austria.
Academically, Brismar holds a Ph.D. in the interdisciplinary field of water, environment and development at Linköping University, Sweden (2003). Prior to that, she completed a Master’s degree (MSc) in Biology at Stockholm University (1996), focusing on water resource issues in developing countries. In more recent years, she has studied behavioral science (2007/08), professional coaching techniques (2006), and Environmental Management (2013) at different universities in Stockholm, Sweden.
Altogether, Dr. Brismar has extensive expertise in the area of water, environment and sustainable development, and more recently also in sustainable/circular fashion. She has worked with environmental issues of large-scale agriculture (including cotton and wheat production), large dam projects, land degradation, water scarcity, water quality, gender issues, and upstream-downstream water conflicts, as well as the concepts of sustainable development, ecosystem goods and services, cumulative impacts, systems analysis, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), environmental management, and – since 2012 – focusing particularly on circular economy. In addition, she has a genuine interest in human psychology, interpersonal communication, and societal development at large. Since early years, she has a private penchant for arts, design and textiles. From these various elements, her professional interest in sustainability and circularity issues of the textile and apparel industry has emerged. Moreover, during the last 25 years of work, she has developed strong analytical and writing skills, with special abilities to develop new concepts, tools, methods and models.
To conclude, Dr. Brismar holds an interdisciplinary and international perspective, with special expertise in environmental issues, sustainable development, and circular economy. Hence, she is able to provide high quality, tailored, and cutting-edge services and products for any fashion actor that wishes to advance its present agenda and performance in relation to sustainability and circularity.
