The Sustainable Fashion Forum Announces First Speakers for 2026 Conference
Sustainable fashion has no shortage of conferences exploring the technical, operational, and regulatory sides of sustainability, from materials and supply chains to circularity, traceability, and reporting.
What it doesn’t have is a room where neuroscientists, behavioral designers, consumer researchers, and cultural strategists sit alongside leaders in sustainability, policy, marketing, and innovation to answer one question: what actually drives adoption in sustainable fashion?
This week, we’re thrilled to announce the first wave of speakers hitting the SFF26 MainStage October 28-30, 2026, in Portland, Oregon.
At a time when sustainability is being deprioritized across organizations, budgets are tightening, and teams are being asked to justify their impact more directly, the conversation is shifting. The question isn’t just how to build better systems, but how those systems perform in the real world with real consumers, under real market conditions.
SFF26 is built for that reality.
This year’s conference theme, The Science of Adoption, examines the psychological, cultural, strategic, and market forces that shape whether sustainable products, programs, and systems gain traction.
This first wave of speakers reflects a deliberate focus on connecting sustainability to business outcomes, from revenue and retention to brand relevance and long-term growth, through a deeper understanding of the behavioral, cultural, and structural factors that determine whether initiatives resonate in the market.
Matt Johnson, best-selling author, consumer neuroscientist, and professor, brings a focus on decision-making at the moment of choice, exploring why consumers’ stated values so often fail to translate into action. His work offers a clearer view into how purchasing decisions are actually formed, with implications for how brands design products, messaging and experiences that resonate in practice.
Evelyn Gosnell, Managing Director at Irrational Labs, represents the applied edge of behavioral science. Drawing on her work with global companies across product, growth, and design, she translates behavioral theory into execution, grounding the conversation in what it takes to build for real human behavior rather than assumptions.
Katie Thomas, lead of the Kearney Consumer Institute, contributes a market-wide perspective shaped by large-scale consumer research and retail strategy. Her work connects shifts in consumer sentiment to broader retail dynamics, anchoring the conversation in commercial reality rather than abstraction.
Jasmine Bina, cultural futurist and founder of Concept Bureau, brings a focus on belief systems, generational, values and the narratives that shape adoption. Her perspective underscores that consumer behavior is not driven by logic alone, but by identity, aspiration, and social context, factors critical to moving sustainable fashion beyond niche positioning.
Ashley Munro, Senior Claims and Integrity Manager at Better Cotton, brings expertise at the intersection of sustainability claims, certification and policy. Her work reflects the growing importance of trust, particularly as brands navigate increased scrutiny around greenwashing and the complexity of communicating sustainability credibly.
Dana Davis, founder of Dana Davis Consulting and former sustainability leader at Mara Hoffman, brings deep experience in building and implementing sustainability and circularity strategies within a real business context. Her work offers a grounded view into what it takes to translate sustainability from vision into operations, particularly when it is embedded at the core of a brand. Her perspective provides insight into how brand positioning, consumer response, and commercial performance intersect in practice.
Danielle Vermeer, Head of Product at ThredUp, offers an operator’s perspective from the front lines of resale and social commerce. Her experience across ThredUp, Amazon Fashion, and Teleport provides insight into how secondhand is being positioned to scale, and what it takes to drive sustained consumer participation in circular models.
Brittany Sierra, founder of the Sustainable Fashion Forum, frames the broader conversation. Her work sits at the intersection of consumer behavior, sustainability, and industry strategy, focusing on the disconnect between the systems the industry has built and the rate at which consumers engage with them.
We’re building the SFF26 speaker lineup around a specific challenge: understanding why sustainability initiatives so often struggle to translate into real consumer behavior, and what it takes to change that.
More speakers and programming details will be announced soon. In the meantime, tickets for SFF26 are now available for those looking to engage in a more grounded, business-critical conversation around the future of sustainable fashion.
JOIN US AT SFF26
Join us this October 28-30 in Portland, OR! Register your team and stay tuned for the latest announcements throughout the season by subscribing to our event updates and newsletter.
Be the first to know of any information leading up to the event through Instagram and LinkedIn.
