City Counsel Session (December 2026 - Circular Economy Focus)
City Counsel is designed for people who move across sectors, stitch networks together and connect the dots. We believe Philadelphia gets smarter, faster and better when we learn from past, present, and future dreamers and doers and figure out ways to collaborate and support each other.
Grateful to our host Kiersten Mailler at uCity Square. uCity Square exists at the intersection of world-class universities, research institutions, academic medical centers, and dynamic neighborhoods. Their mission is to facilitate collaboration that stimulates breakthroughs, drives inclusive economic growth, and expands our diverse and vibrant community.
Speakers:
Samantha Wittchen from Circular Philadelphia • Building Philadelphia's Circular Economy
Samantha (Sam) is a circular economy professional, engineer, designer, and writer whose career has centered on turning strategy into real infrastructure. She co-founded Circular Philadelphia, which engages and convenes businesses, institutions, residents and policymakers in greater Philadelphia to advance a low-waste, regenerative economy. She currently serves as the organization's Managing Director, overseeing operations, outreach and policy work.
In addition to Circular Philadelphia, she administers the Circular Cities Network, a community of practice for circular economy leaders from 25+ city and county governments and city government-adjacent organizations across the U.S. to share knowledge, strategies, tactics and funding opportunities to accelerate the shift to a circular economy. She also develops circular tech and programs for Fortune 500 companies, higher ed institutions and municipal governments as Principal and Co-founder of iSpring.
Samantha received the 2024 Rad Award for Innovator of the Year from The Philadelphia Citizen and Rad Girls, was one of Technical.ly Philly’s 2024 RealLIST Engineers, and was named one of the 150 Most Influential Philadelphians by Philadelphia Magazine in 2023.
Josh Mastromatto from Rego — AI-Powered Waste Audits. Josh is the co-founder and CEO of Rego, an AI-powered waste auditing platform for facility management and enterprise organizations. Josh is a TRUE Certified Zero Waste Advisor and former professional athlete. After retiring from sports, he recognized that the same data-driven principles used to measure performance on the field could be applied to measuring, predicting, and preventing waste in cities, schools, and commercial buildings.
Kyle Wyche from Ecotone Renewables — The food waste solution that pays you
Emily Watts the founder and CEO of Coblr, the digital infrastructure that connects and powers repair and aftersales end to end - from brands to the repair providers who do the work.
A lifelong customer of repair and second-hand, Emily spent decades frustrated that repair had never gotten easier while the rest of circular commerce did: hard to find, handwritten paper tickets, no idea when your things were coming back. After a career scaling technology inside legacy industries, most recently as COO of Sling, through its acquisition by Toast, she started her own mail-in repair business to understand the problem firsthand. Two years of running it, plus conversations with hundreds of repair shops and brands, made the gap clear. Repair isn't missing demand. It is missing infrastructure.
Emily founded Coblr with one goal: make repair as easy as buying new.
Organizers are Jeff Friedman, Kelsey Hubbell, Cat McManus, Ed.D., Eryn Santamoor and Rosetta Carrington Lue
Photo Credit: Kelsey Hubbell