Willem Overbosch

Willem Overbosch Engagement Lead Circular Economy 

Willem Overbosch leads industry and regional engagement for Southern Cross University's circular economy work, connecting research with businesses, councils and communities across the Northern Rivers and beyond. His current engagements include the Circular Northern Rivers Project a multi-year collaboration between SCU, Meat & Livestock Australia and regional industry. The feasibility study produced the Northern Rivers Circularity Hub Discovery Stage report (V.MFS.0009, MLA, 2025), investigating the feasibility of a regional circular economy cooperative.Willem also works with the Decarbonisation Hub's Land and Primary Industry Network (LPIN) on regional business waste estimation, building regional data intelligence. He contributed to the development of SCU's Gaduate Certificate in Circular Economy as one of the industry experts.

Dutch-born and based in the Northern Rivers since 2022, Willem holds an MBA from the University of Maastricht. His thesis, Development of Transnational Managers: Leadership and Motivation (1997), argued that soft HRM communication, motivation and leadership outperforms procedural personnel management in transnational organisations, a lens he applies today to "green & sustainability" team activation and cross-cultural sustainability programs. He is also the author of Toptrends voor Ondernemers (nominated Dutch Management Book of the Year, 2018). In 2024 he authored the Sport & Olympic Fact-Finding Mission Report on the Brisbane 2032 Games, commissioned by SportsNL and the Consulate-General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Sydney, mapping circular economy, sustainability and legacy opportunities across South East Queensland. He has presented at the UN System Staff College in Geneva and across Australia's sustainability sector.

He brings over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur, online publisher and sustainability strategist. In the Netherlands, Willem founded and led MKB Servicedesk (SME Servicedesk), one of the country's largest online platforms for small and medium enterprises giving him a deep, operator-level understanding of how SMEs think, decide and adopt new frameworks. He is Co-Founder of SDG Align, a B Corp certified platform that helps organisations translate sustainability into measurable outcomes using UN Sustainble Development Goals (SDGs) and circular economy frameworks.

His work focuses on the translation layer turning research, frameworks and data into practical pathways that organisations can act on. He brings particular depth in SME engagement and entrepreneurship, and welcomes collaboration with researchers working on circular economy, regional transitions, entrepreneurship and SME's in the context of ESG measurement and SDG implementation.