Monique Maissan Waste2Wear

As CEO and founder of Waste2Wear, Monique is a world leader committed towards sustainable innovation using textile products made from recycled plastic to create a positive environmental impact. The innovations in her company, have been acknowledged through the Entrepreneur the Year award 2012, in the USA from Enterprising Women; the Sustainability Award from the European Economic and Sustainability Committee in 2014; the Women Economic Forum’s Outstanding Women for the Advance of Sustainability award in 2017; The #1 Business Women Of Middle East award in Egypt in 2018; and the She Rockers MyEO Women SDG Award 2019 from EO (Entrepreneur Organization) and winner of the EY (Ernst & Young) Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year 2019 award.

Monique has also founded various social programs, including Waste2Weave, designed to improve the livelihood of Indian women working on hand-looms, while taking plastic out of the environment. She continuously strives to create collaborations with a broad diversity of stakeholders to help to create awareness and to find solutions to protect the environment. This includes collaborations with the Jane Goodall Institute, National Geographic and many more.

She is a frequent speaker at sustainability events around the globe, including, the 2015 EXCELerate Conference in Canada, the EWC Sustainability Summit at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in 2016, China’s World Creative Economy Summit in 2017, the Beyond Plastic Pollution conference in Australia in 2017 & the BWME summit in 2018 at the Arab League.