Wild Card Winner Brings Latin American Perspective to Schmidt-MacArthur Fellowship

LONDON, March 24, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --



Today it has been announced that Federico Apéstegui from Costa Rica, a masters student in Business & Sustainable Development at HEC Paris, is the winner of the Schmidt-MacArthur Fellowship Wild Card Competition.

The Schmidt-MacArthur Fellowship, a joint initiative between the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in the UK and The Schmidt Family Foundation in the United States, offers an innovation platform for postgraduate students and academics from top international design, engineering and business schools to rethink the economy.

The Fellowship programme which already works with universities across three continents including Europe, USA & Asia, will now welcome the addition of a Latin American perspective for 2014. Federico Apéstegui intends to undertake his Circular Economy Innovation Project by looking at the developing economy of his home country.

"Costa  Rica  is  a  small  country  with  big  ambitions  and  bold  ideas,  proof  of which are the abolition of the army and the protection of 25% of our territory under different conservation schemes. However, global and internal forces are now challenging us to redefine our development model. Most of my current stands and opinions on sustainability and development have come from questioning where we are headed as a region and what changes must be undertaken at a business and policy level by rethinking our current systems in the pursuit of procuring a sustainable future," said Federico Apéstegui.

"Having  worked  in  the  Cradle  to  Cradle  movement  since  2006, it  is  so exciting  to  see  our fellowship  programme  to  advance the  circular economy expanding in  leading  universities across  the  globe," said Wendy Schmidt, President of The Schmidt Family Foundation. "It is particularly important in countries where people are most likely to benefit quickly from an  industrial  economy that eliminates  waste."

Federico will join 16 other students from leading universities including MIT, Yale, Stanford, Tongji University, National Institute of Design, India and London Business School, on the Schmidt-MacArthur Fellowship programme in 2014.

http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org

NOTES  TO  EDITORS

The  Schmidt-MacArthur  Fellowship  Programme, launched in 2013, is a global higher education initiative created by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org) in partnership with The Schmidt Family Foundation (http://www.theschmidt.org). The programme has been created to develop the skills and innovative thinking required to transition to a circular economy. The Fellowships are open to postgraduate students from a global network of twelve Partner Universities including: Imperial College London, Cranfield University, London Business School in the UK, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Yale University, University of California Berkeley & Stanford University in the United States, Euromed Management, Delft University of Technology and MIP Politecnico di Milano in Continental Europe, Tongji University in China and India's National Institute of Design. Students and academic mentors from these universities will take part in a UK-based intensive summer school before returning to their university to focus on a postgraduate, circular economy innovation project. For more information please visit http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/education/schmidt.