Claire Janisch

Claire Janisch, who heads up South Africa's Biomimicry hub, has an MSc.ChemEng in the field of Environmental Process Engineering and has worked in Africa as an independent sustainability consultant in: Environmental Technology, Sustainable Energy & Climate Change, Cleaner Production, Sustainable Urban Design, Integrated Waste Management, Sustainable Agricultural Practices, Eco-labeling, Environmental Management & Environmental Education. Her work focus is training & capacity building and developing policy, strategies and new projects to enable sustainable development on a broader scale in southern Africa. She has also been a trainer for The Natural Step and uses whole systems thinking and integration of ideas across disciplines in developing sustainable solutions.

Claire is a senior associate of the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership in South Africa and a founding director of Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) in South Africa. In addition, she is a co-creator of the Genius Lab, an experiential learning organization inspiring innovation and future thinking for organisations and individuals (children and adults).

Claire was lucky enough to participate in the Biomimicry design course in the Amazon rainforest in Peru in November 2007, and is now one of the 16 students on the first Biomimicry 2 Year Certificate course. Claire helped organise the Biomimicry course in South Africa with staff from the Biomimicry Institute in Aug/Sep 2009 and is in the process of planning to set up a South African office of the Biomimicry Institute.