Our mission is to equip the world’s workforce with the skills needed to create a better future.
The Creative Team
Swivel Skills is built and designed by Dr. Leyla Acaroglu and Emma Segal.
Leyla and Emma have worked on a range of projects together to advance the circular transformation, including the Circular Classroom for Finland and the Anatomy of Action in collaboration with the UNEP. Dr. Leya Acarogu (left) & Emma Segal (right)
Leyla Acaroglu
Dr. Leyla Acaroglu is an award-winning designer, sociologist and entrepreneur helping to pioneer the global transformation to a sustainable and circular economy by design. She is a TED speaker, a UNEP Champion of the Earth Laureate, Chief Circular Designer for Circular Australia and named a global Change-Maker by LinkedIn. Leyla is the creator of the Disruptive Design Method, the founder of The UnSchool and the creative agency Disrupt Design. Leyla travels the world inspiring audiences, communities and companies to think differently about the role we can each play in designing a positive future and develops activating tools to support the transformation to a circular, sustainable and regenerative future.
FOUNDER AND CHIEF KNOWLEDGE OFFICER
Emma Segal
Emma Segal brings over two decades of experience designing and producing internationally-manufactured consumer goods around the world for multi-national organizations, as well as designing for change-making projects to support the growth of the circular economy at all levels. With training in international relations, design and illustration, along with a Masters degree in changing the way designers practice, Emma also facilitates workshops around the world as an UnSchool Educator in sustainability, design & systems thinking. Emma has won many design & illustration awards, and her work has been seen in high-end retailers, movies, TV shows, magazines, books on systems change and featured by the Smithsonian.
CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER
The Inspiration for Creating Swivel Skills
Swivel Skills was born out of a set of experiences that Dr. Leyla Acaroglu had as she supported companies and organizations around the world to engage with sustainability and the circular economy.
As a leading expert on applied sustainability and designing for the circular economy, she has spent over twenty years working with some of the biggest companies, training design and engineering teams, speaking to industry groups and developing educational content that is used in education around the world. From these many experiences, especially talking with senior sustainability professionals in large companies, she released that there was a significant skills gap in people’s comprehension and capacity to take action as the economy moves towards circularity and a gap in the market for high-quality corporate sustainability training content.
In 2020 Leyla did a deep dive into what types of tools and resources a company seeking professional knowledge on important topics such as science-based sustainability, climate action and the circular economy, would find online if they wanted to get started. She was alarmed to find that there was no service, platform or group-based educational program that would serve the needs of business. And that navigating the array of promotional content and complexity was slowing down the progress.
Inspired to fill this gap, she sought out examples of past educational upskilling programs that had positively served businesses. She took inspiration from the occupational health and safety movement (OH&S) from the 80s and 90s, specifically the way base training became the norm for all employees, which then facilitated a significant leveling-up of skills around safety. The positive effects this has had on workplace safety, quality of life and risk reduction is evident today. She then set about categorizing and arranging all the best practice processes and content needed for companies and developing the Swivel Skills content and learning system. She wrote the guidebook Swivel to Sustainability as a foundation to the content presented in the platform.
Drawing from her degree in social science and sustainability, her background in life cycle assessment and her practical experience in environmental auditing and circular design, combined with the tens of thousands of hours of direct instruction and award-winning educational projects, Leyla was able to dissect and coordinate a vast array of important topical information and dissect it into digestible and manageable systems of knowledge. Combined with the creative communication skills of lead designer Emma Segal, they have created the beautiful, easy-to-understand and interactive learning experience that is Swivel Skills.
The platform is intended to grow and expand over time as content is needed.
OUR MISSION AND VISION
To equip the world’s workforce with the skills, knowledge, capacity and motivation to take significant action in transforming the economy from linear, exploitative and waste-based, to sustainable, regenerative and circular.
We believe that we can design a new system that makes the old one obsolete. The future is defined by our actions today. With more contributions, creativity and collaboration, we can design a future that works better for all of us.
Content & Data Validation
The content curated and delivered inside the Swivel Skills platform is based on the latest best practices and a technical review of referenced material. Sources include the United Nations, academic publications and technical reports.
Leyla’s expertise combined with two decades of experience working with and advising companies of all sizes and not-for-profits has ensured she has been able to filter through her vast knowledge bank to synthesize the relevant content. Coupled with Emma’s visual communication design, the platform offers a highly-engaging, visually-appealing customer experience.
All sources are provided, along with additional reading and resources. Downloadable worksheets are intended to be easy to apply and relevant to business needs to bring your knowledge into action.