E09 Lennard Hulsbos | Design Strategist & Advocate for Circular Economy, Universal Basic Income, and Privacy | Creating a more sustainable shared future

Lennard Hulsbos is a design strategist working at the intersection of business, technology, and designed experiences for clients like Deutsche Telekom, Huawei, Lenovo, Starbucks, Philips, Porsche, Uber, and Circle Economy.

His experience in building global design agencies and teams began in 2008, when he founded one of the world’s first online graphic design agencies, Cradle of Design. Len went on to help lead branding and design agencies across Asia Pacific and Europe – including Aquarius (now ServicePlan China), Designit, Spark Design, and Iris – before setting up the Netherlands outpost of the Danish firm Manyone in 2019. Projects included strategy and branding for a vegan ice cream brand under Unilever, the development of Toolkit Earth, and thought leadership on the EU Green Deal and its implications for business, before COVID-19 halted the Dutch office’s operations in 2020.

Len continues to do independent consulting in the field of strategic design, championing post-human-centric design and sustainability in product development, while advising organizations on expansion and change management.

Active in various social and political causes, Len was part of a youth-led effort helping to shape the Climate Agreement for the Dutch government. He was also part of the team awarded two UN Millennium Goals Awards with Satara, a slow fashion women’s equality NGO.

Len co-founded Circular UBI (C.UBI), an initiative that aims to develop a sustainable economic paradigm by proposing a preliminary framework to finance a universal basic income out of global resource usage, within the context of the circular economy and enabled by technology. He discusses both circularity and UBI with us today, as well as his thoughts on user rights / data privacy, and the socio-economic impact of an automated society.

This episode is dedicated to anyone trying to build bridges of understanding and live in harmony with those who have different beliefs. In this (artificially?) divided world, Len’s kind and inclusive approach to having potentially polarizing discussions is a vision of the future we can all get behind.

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Follow Len https://www.linkedin.com/in/hulsbos/ and C.UBI http://www.circularubi.org/

Ask him about Toolkit Earth, a facilitation tool that aims to marry business, human, and planetary needs to solve the climate crisis, whilst building great cities, businesses, and experiences.

He is currently building a political lobby with Maak Amsterdam and supporting a global coalition of youth advocates in creating a campaign.

More talks:

Creative Mornings Munich

Challenging the Status Quo Podcast

Recommended Reading:

Environmental Migrants: Up to 1 Billion by 2050

New Zealand Ditches GDP for Happiness and Wellbeing

More on Circular Economy, UBI, Data Rights

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Photo by Stephanie Zuure

Music: “Neon Laser Horizon” by Kevin MacLeod (imcompetech.com) licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

Sound Editing by franticsong

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xoxo Jo