Hi Ana, could you introduce yourself and briefly describe your professional journey?

Hi, my name is Ana Maria Quijano-Wittemann. I am co-founder of RIVED, a company building an ecosystem to scale fashion upcycling. We operate in the circular fashion field.

I always knew I wanted to work in impact, but not just from one angle. I wanted the full picture: social, environmental, everything. Not just the CO₂ tunnel. My early career was in marketing and the automotive industry, which was a long way from where I wanted to be. So I decided to go back and study. I did a Master’s in Sustainable Businesses at a business school in Italy, and that gave me the 360-degree toolkit I needed to actually build sustainable ventures properly.

When I finished, around 2016–17, there simply weren’t jobs in the field I wanted. So I moved into venture capital. It wasn’t an impact fund, but it was innovation and that experience gave me the business-building and investment skills I now apply directly to Rived.

What were the most difficult professional challenges you faced?

The biggest barrier was that there were no jobs when I wanted one. When I finished my Master’s in sustainability, everyone from corporate finance found positions easily. Those of us who wanted roles with real impact were told: “There are no jobs for you.” That was the hardest thing, having to wait and take an indirect route. I think things are really different now as Green Tech has really boomed!

There is also a subtler, ongoing challenge that I think a lot of people in this field share. You are constantly in a position of convincing, proving, and justifying. You are always fighting for change. Earlier this year I joined an online call, prompted by a LinkedIn message asking if people were exhausted from fighting to shift systems and mindsets. Around 100 people showed up, all working in green tech and sustainability, all sharing the same exhaustion. That was a real moment of recognition.

What helped you overcome those challenges? Were there any support systems or networks that made a difference?

On the practical side, Germany’s ecosystem for green tech and circularity is genuinely strong: NGOs, resources, funding… there´s real institutional interest, and that infrastructure makes such a difference.

On the personal side, most people in my immediate network didn’t fully understand what I was building. For them, sustainability still meant someone protesting at sea. But they knew me, and they believed in me, and that was enough. Having people who trust you even when they don’t entirely get it is its own kind of support.

And honestly, the biggest shift came from realising I wasn’t alone in the exhaustion. Once you understand that the struggle is shared and normal across the whole sector, you can stop fighting it and move forward. We are all in this together, and we are at the next level now!

What are you trying to achieve with Rived, and what is the real-world impact you are working towards?

The fashion industry’s sustainability conversation is stuck in a negative loop: “fashion is bad, we are bad consumers” and that narrative never changes anything. Meanwhile, most investment in green tech for fashion still just funds producing more and selling more. The same cycle, dressed up differently.

What we see at RIVED is that upcycling is one of the most overlooked solutions out there. It gets dismissed as unscalable, but because we bring both a tech background and a business background, we understand how to make it scalable. That is what we are building: an ecosystem that treats upcycling not as a niche craft but as a serious, scalable part of the solution. And it has to be built in community with everyone else working in this movement, no single solution does it alone.

What advice would you give to a young woman wanting to start a career in green tech?

This is genuinely the best time to start. When I began, my dream was to become a Chief Sustainability Officer and that role barely existed. Now my LinkedIn is full of those listings. The field has been built, normalised, and is wide open.

The hard part is cutting through the noise. Don’t be driven by dogmatism or the superficial rhetoric that surrounds sustainability. Find the areas that are genuinely interesting to you, where you can be creative and bring your full self.

In terms of skills: resilience, yes, because it is uncertain and demanding. But above all, collaboration. No one solution makes the difference on its own. Reach out to people, share your ideas, don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and speak. That openness is what moves things forward.

And my closing message would be: know yourself from the beginning. The decisions you make now won’t define you forever, my life changed completely within a few years. Be yourself. Listen to people, but always keep your own mind. It sounds simple, but right now that really is the way to build your career.

Is there a motto you live by?

When Monday comes and the world feels like it’s breaking — which happens a lot when you’re building something from scratch — I tell myself: wait until Friday. The world will look different by then. Just get through the week, and then look back. It always changes. You’re always one step further than you were.