Monica Boța-Moisin

Cultural Sustainability Systems Weaver, Lawyer, Ashoka Fellow & WHF Ambassador for Cultural Sustainability

Monica Boța-Moisin is an Asholk Fellow and cultural intellectual property lawyer who has pioneered the concept of Cultural Intellectual Property Rights as Custodianship Rights and Cultural Sustainability in Fashion. In 2017, she authored the TEDx Talk “Cultural Fashion: Transform the Fashion Industry from Villain to Hero." Monica's expertise is intersectional, combining law, fashion, intangible cultural heritage related to Traditional Knowledge (TK), Traditional Cultural Expressions (TCEs) and biodiversity safeguarding. She is the proponent of a soft law framework - The 3C Rule Consent. Credit. Compensation© - for forging sustainable, fair and equitable relationships between creative industry stakeholders and Traditional Knowledge Custodians, including craftspeople, who belong to Indigenous Peoples, Ethnic Groups and Local Communities. Monica is a multidisciplinary creative, author of the Cultural Sustainability Matrix (2023), working with cultural sustainability in fashion since 2018. She is the founder of the Cultural Intellectual Property Rights Initiative® (CIPRI) and the WhyWeCraft® Association, designing benefit-sharing business models for the promotion of cultural sustainability in fashion and creating legal solutions and advocacy tools for systemic change in fashion and law. Monica runs a cultural sustainability education and consulting practice and together with her team she hosts the Cultural Sustainability Academy The Knowledge Hub for Cultural Sustainability.® She travels to various geographies to conduct fieldwork and consultations with craft custodians, implement grassroots legal literacy programs and design strategies for cultural sustainability and cultural intellectual property rights protection.

@monicamoisin 
@culturalintellectualproperty 

culturalintellectualproperty.com
whywecraft.eu

Tara Gujadhur

Traditional Arts and Ethnology Center, Luang Prabang, Lao PDR

Tara Gujadhur is a cultural heritage specialist, curator, and sustainable tourism consultant, who co-founded the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre in Luang Prabang, Laos in 2007. TAEC is a social enterprise dedicated to celebrating the traditional arts and cultural diversity of Laos. As Co-Director of TAEC, Tara guides the centre’s advocacy, research, exhibitions, and strategic development, among other responsibilities. Prior to co-founding TAEC, Tara moved to Laos in 2003 with a development agency where she spent three years advising the government on sustainable tourism, primarily in ethnic minority communities. With over 20 years experience in cultural heritage management and tourism development, she has worked with the Khasi people, an indigenous ethnic group of northeast India, and the San (Bushmen) in Botswana.

taeclaos.org

Marlene Herberth 

KraftMade, Cincu, România

Marlene Herberth is an anthropologist and memory archivist, exploring affective associations in projects that bridge ancient wisdom with contemporary culture while addressing modern societal issues. As a cultural producer and curator, she organizes cross-disciplinary exhibitions at the intersection of craft, art, design, and architecture. Along with Alex Herberth, she co-founded **KraftMade Research & Lab**, a platform that activates heritage knowledge for regenerative futures. Their work focuses on wood, food, and textiles as well as various heritage craft techniques as mediums for restoration, historical reconstruction, and storytelling. Based in rural Transylvania and operating internationally, they offer cultural sustainability workshops and immersive experiences.

@kraft_made

Kanna Siripurapu

Biocultural Researcher, Hyderabad, India

Kanna Siripurapu is a graduate student at the University of Guelph, pursuing a doctoral program at the People, Plants, and Policy Lab, conducting research focusing on the biocultural diversity of the First Nations of Newfoundland and ethnic and pastoralist communities in India.

Nicole Crouch

Cultural Sustainability Academy, The Knowledge Hub for Cultural Sustainability® (CSA), Sydney, Australia

Nicole Crouch is a senior commercial textile print designer and design team manager in the fashion industry. Her designs span runway, royalty and celebrities to local and accessible markets. Nicole has immersed herself within a diversity of craft custodian communities around the world and developed continuing mutually beneficial relationships. This combination of experiences has created an understanding of the rhythms and values of textile creation and knowledge systems within various contexts. At the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Nicole teaches Textiles and Sustainability at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and is a PhD candidate. Her research question is: How can commercial textile print designers in the fashion industry be supported to turn cultural misappropriation into Cultural Sustainability? Nicole is also the Creative Industries & Academic Research Lead at the Cultural Intellectual Property Rights Initiative® (CIPRI) where she translates complex legal and Cultural Sustainability concepts into fashion industry methodologies and tertiary design education strategies.

@_nicole_crouch

Francis Gurry

Former Executive Director of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), Geneva, Switzerland

Francis Gurry is an Australian who served as Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) from 2008 to September 2020. During his tenure, the revenue of the Organization increased by 50% to CHF 480 million, the global IP Systems administered by the Organization expanded significantly in membership and use, three new treaties were concluded, a new administrative building and a new conference hall were constructed, and WIPO joined and then led the publication of the Global Innovation Index. A number of successful public-private partnerships were also developed, including the Accessible Books Consortium, which makes available to visually impaired persons throughout the world a repertoire of more than one million works in accessible formats in over 70 languages. The Organization moved fully to digital platforms for internal management, administration and services, and over 400 accessions were made by countries to the treaties administered by the Organization. Francis' current roles include being Honorary Dean of the Shanghai International College of Intellectual Property of Tongji University, Overseas Dean of Nanjing Audit University, Vice Chair of the World Internet Conference and Strategic Advisor to IPH Limited.

Padmaja Krishnan

PADMAJA, Mumbai, India

Padmaja Krishnan studied commerce at Kolkata University and fashion design at National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi, before setting up her studio with three ambitions: firstly, to observe and reflect in her designs the relationship between human behaviour and clothing; secondly, to integrate the work of traditionally-skilled artisans with modern design practice; thirdly, to combine sustainability and social responsibility with humour and delight. At PADMAJA, she creates “non-conformative, quirky and peaceful” clothing, accessories and handcrafted products. In her designs, tradition is deeply respected even as it’s brought into a close dance with the contemporary.

@padmaja_studio

padmaja.shop

Olivia Silveira

Projeto Fio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Olivia Silveira is a researcher, designer and co-founder of Projeto Fio, a social business that works with crafts and fashion as tools for social change. As a German Chancellor Fellow at the Humboldt Foundation, she researched justice-oriented partnerships between artisans and designers while working at Circular Berlin, supporting decolonial projects on circular economy and textiles. Committed to fostering positive change in Brazilian communities, Olivia bridges artisans, designers, NGOs and brands to create a more sustainable and equitable fashion system. Her interdisciplinary approach aims to disrupt exploitative practices and promote circularity and social impact.

@projetofio

projetofio.com

Malacate Collective

For over 18 years, Malacate has been an autonomous self-managed collective made up of dedicated women weavers and embroiderers. Its aim is to reactivate traditional and ancient techniques and designs from the Altos y Selva region of Chiapas in Mexico. Malacate preserves textile practice as a means of cultural transmission and resistance; protects traditional knowledge and cultural expressions; honours territory, body, biocultural heritage and intercultural relations; addresses social problems in the community such as domestic violence; and promotes the exchange of knowledge between the women artisans and the traditional doctor elders of Abya Yala. The World Hope Forum will be joined by two of Malacate’s members: Karla Pérez Canovas, an anthropologist and the founder of Colectiva Malacate, and Daniela Brígida López Gutiérrez, an embroidery teacher from the Nachig community in the Zinacantán municipality. Karla has coauthored “Ruralities” on the work culture and feminisms of southeast Mexico, and the “Mexican Textile Design Anthology” on women, creativity and interculturality which won the Tenerife 2019 Award for the Promotion and Research of Crafts in Spain and the Americas. She is also the co-author of a recent essay “Embroidery to Repair Life: Body-Territory Mapping and Collective Embroidery.” Daniela is the co-author of the video documentary “Memory Protection and Reality of the Tsotsil and Tseltal.”

@colectiva_malacate