Samantha Wittchen

About Samantha Wittchen

Samantha Wittchen is a circular economy professional, designer/illustrator, harpist, and occasional writer living and working in Philadelphia. Over the past 15+ years, she has co-founded three companies - iSpring Sustainability, Philly Music Lab and Circa Systems - and two non-profits, Circular Philadelphia and the Philly Jewish Music Festival. As a designer, engineer and creative thinker, she uses a design methodology to tackle big, multi-disciplinary problems and create solutions that improve our lives and the world around us. Current projects include work on building an exchange to enable the reuse of adaptive equipment for children with chronic illness and disabilities, creating an online resource to make it easy to find places to donate and recycle unwanted items in Philly, and launching the first ever Philly Jewish Music Festival. She has written for over a decade on sustainability and circularity issues for Keystone Edge and Grid Magazine, including the January 2023 cover story on the state of recycling in Philadelphia. Her design and illustration work has been featured in the New York Times and at The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, and she illustrated the 2022 Temple University Press publication Exploring Philly Nature. For her work at the intersection of the circular economy, technology, design and community, she received the 2024 Rad Award for Innovator of the Year from The Philadelphia Citizen, is one of Technical.ly Philly’s 2024 RealLIST Engineers, and was named one of the 150 Most Influential Philadelphians by Philadelphia Magazine in 2023.

Experience

1. Principal and Co-founder

   Ispring Sustainability

   May 2008 — Present

   iSpring is a women-owned sustainability and circularity consultancy that helps industrial, institutional and municipal clients implement sustainable and circular systems and operations, improve their sustainability performance through analytics and metrics, and engage with internal and external stakeholders through education and outreach. We work closely with organizations that are trying to understand, optimize and communicate the inter-connections among the way they use environmental resources, the people impacted by their operations and their long-term organizational value. Our operational work spans energy, water, circular economy, supply chain, transportation, and emissions-related issues. We employ techniques such as auditing and mapping to help clients gain a holistic view of their systems. Our metrics-based analytical work allows clients to track progress and improve their performance, and our education and outreach work helps clients better engage with stakeholders to communicate the work they\'re doing and generate buy-in.In addition to working with clients in Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, I work with iSpring\'s other principal to develop overall direction for the company, engage in business development and seek out strategic partnerships and alliances.

Education

• University of Virginia

  B.S., Mechanical Engineering

  1998 — 2001

• Eastman School of Music

  N/A, Applied Music (Harp)

  1996 — 1998

Skills

• Business Development
• Energy Systems
• Energy
• Strategy
• Sustainability Metrics
• Website Development
• Green Building
• Wordpress
• Leadership
• Problem Solving
• Management Consulting
• Writing
• Sustainability
• Strategic Partnerships
• Leed
• Environmental Awareness
• Blogging
• Performance Metrics
• Sustainable Business
• Marketing
• Energy Efficiency
• Project Management
• Storyboarding
• Business Strategy
• Process Improvement
• Environmental Policy
• Sustainable Development
• Music Performance
• Strategic Planning
• Engineering
• Renewable Energy
• Teaching
• Graphic Design
• Data Visualization