Samantha Wittchen
Co-founder & Managing Director 

Samantha Wittchen is a circular economy professional, engineer, designer, and writer whose career has centered on turning sustainability strategy into real infrastructure.  She serves as Circular Philadelphia’s Managing Director, overseeing operations and administration for the organization.

In addition to Circular Philadelphia, she is the administrator of the Circular Cities Network, a grassroots network of circularity practitioners from 25+ city and county governments and city government-adjacent organizations across the U.S. that exists to share knowledge, strategies, tactics and funding opportunities to accelerate the shift to a circular economy.  She also develops circular tech and programs for companies and organizations as Principal and Co-founder of iSpring. She has led circularity and sustainability projects for Fortune 500 companies, higher ed institutions and municipal governments, and she provides design and communications support for the clean energy economy to the Philadelphia Energy Authority.

Samantha has written for over a decade on circularity- and sustainability-related topics for Philadelphia-based Grid Magazine, including the January 2023 cover story on the state of recycling in Philadelphia.  She has also written for Green Building and Design magazine and Keystone Edge, and she has presented talks on recycling and circular economy throughout the Eastern PA region, including in May 2024 at Ignite Philly.

She is a LEED Green Associate, holds in a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Virginia and is also the Professional Associate for harp at the University of Pennsylvania. She received the 2024 Rad Award for Innovator of the Year from The Philadelphia Citizen and Rad Girls, 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.