Klára Hajnal

Klára Hajnal is an innovative sustainability expert and strategic designer with a strong background in systemic design, blue economy and circular economy — blending design, sustainability and business practice through interdisciplinary approaches.

One of the most valuable results of her three decades of research and teaching at the University of Pécs is the systemic, comprehensive elaboration of a model of sustainable development and its application in urban development (PhD, 2006). She was the first in Hungarian higher education to create accredited courses on the theory of sustainable development and its applied knowledge in urban development, rural development and tourism, and she contributed to the sustainable development strategy of the city of Pécs. She was the lead lector of Günter Pauli's Blue Economy and a regular contributor to the Blue Economy Summer School (BESS), and is a Creative Member of the Club of Budapest.

As a strategic designer she has taken part in numerous working groups analysing environmental and social problems. Her work and creative thinking are grounded in systems thinking and ecological ordering principles — the complexity of interconnected natural, social and economic interactions that vary across space and time. Both in theory and in practice, her local responses to global phenomena are driven by a committed sense of responsibility for people and the Earth.