A workshop at the 2026 Plastics Recycling Conference examined how internal decision-making and organizational behavior can shape progress on circular economy efforts.
Cassie Gruber led the session, “From Linear to Circular Leadership: Behavioral Transformation for Systems Change,” in San Diego. She said many organizations have established strategies, goals and technical capabilities, but still face challenges in execution.
“The barrier is rarely strategy, it’s behavioral infrastructure,” Gruber, former director of sustainability business solutions at global electronics manufacturing services and supply chain company Jabil, said during the session.
That statement drew responses from attendees who pointed to slow-moving processes in government, risk aversion, cost pressure, distrust and performance systems that reward short-term results. One participant said company metrics can shape collective behavior, while others described institutional habits that can make it difficult to revisit older ideas or test new ones.
Gruber tied those comments to a broader claim that circular economy progress can be slowed by the same internal patterns that affect communication, collaboration and follow-through. “We cannot build circular systems with linear leadership habits,” she said.
She added that technical solutions alone are often not the limiting factor. “Most barriers are not technical,” she said.
The workshop also served as an early public showcase for CALM Impact, a beta platform Gruber launched after leaving Jabil in November 2025. Her materials describe the platform as a habit-based tool focused on emotional intelligence, reflection and trust, with both individual features and an enterprise dashboard that aggregates team-level patterns.
Gruber said the platform is currently in beta and operates as a web-based application, with plans for iOS and Android versions. The system includes individual journaling tools, guided prompts and short instructional content tied to what she described as an eight-habit framework focused on communication, accountability and decision-making.
Users record reflections on workplace or personal situations, identify behavioral patterns and assign responses across categories such as awareness, honesty and time use. Those inputs generate individual metrics, which can then be aggregated at the enterprise level to show broader trends across teams or organizations.
The platform also includes an optional artificial intelligence component designed to provide feedback on user entries and generate summaries for managers based on aggregated data. Individual responses remain private, while enterprise dashboards display group-level metrics, according to the presentation.
“Systems do not change unless people do,” Gruber said.
