Leen Gorissen, PhD in Biology and founder of Studio Transitio is specialized in transition research, regenerative design and bio-inspired innovation. From 2009 to 2017, she was one of the Transition Research Coordinators working directly under the Board of Directors at the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO Belgium) in charge of transitioning the institute to improve relevance and societal impact of its’ research projects. To achieve that, leen co-developed internal educational courses on systems thinking, transition science, participatory action research and business model innovation, she supported the development of more systemic innovation oriented research proposals and was the VITO lead coordinator of the ARTS project ( http://acceleratingtransitions.eu ) investigating how cities can accelerate the transition to sustainability. As an innovation biologist and a transition process facilitator at Studio Transitio, Leen has developed and facilitated workshops for a broad range of institutes and businesses including the European Environment Agency, the Swedish and Portuguese Environment Agency, the Portuguese Business Council for Sustainable Development, the Belgian Agency for Nature and Forests, Triodos, SAS, Philips, Atlas Copco, Melotte, Business Leaders and the Climate KIC. She is a regular collaborator of nexxworks, a reviewer of H2020 research projects for the European Commission and lead author of the book ‘Change the world City by City’ published by LannooCampus.
Leen has been an invited speaker at many well known institutes and companies such as the European Commission, the European Environment Agency, SAS, Triodos, Philips and has given keynotes and workshops in San Francisco, Oakland, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Perth, Gothenburg, Lisbon, Athens, Utrecht, Ghent and Brussels. She moderated several thought-provoking events including the Roundtable of young entrepreneurs with Jeremy Rifkin in 2013, the ‘Food and the City’ public event in Genk with Conceptual artist Koen Van Mechelen and change makers from Detroit in 2015 and the ‘people’ session at the Informed Cities Forum 2016 with Brazilian Graffiti Street artist Mundano in 2016. She is the lead author of the book ‘Change the world City by City’published by LannooCampus.