Alicia Marseille

Alicia J. Marseille is Senior Director of the Rob & Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Service at Arizona State University, a Senior Global Futures Scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, and a member of the Global Futures Lab Human Economies Collaborative. She is a systems thinker and interdisciplinary leader who works at the frontier of transformational problem framing, pilot design, and pathways to scale across sustainability, economic development, and circular economy systems.

Alicia’s work centers on reframing persistent societal challenges—from waste and materials flow to urban economic resilience—by interrogating assumptions, posing questions that expand the solution space, and designing experiments that test new system architectures. She leads initiatives that move intentionally from open-ended challenge definition to real-world pilots, iterative learning, and scalable models that integrate research, policy, market dynamics, and community priorities. Her leadership is rooted in building interdisciplinary teams and coalitions that span faculty, practitioners, government, industry, and communities.

She has successfully launched and scaled multiple first-of-their-kind programs, including the RISN Incubator—the first U.S. accelerator focused on circular economy startups—and the development of the Circular Plastics Microfactory and Urban Forestry Accelerator, which are designed as repeatable system prototypes that strengthen regional manufacturing, workforce development, and sustainable value chains. These efforts reflect her belief that experimentation, when coupled with thoughtful design and strategic partnerships, can produce enduring system change.

Alicia is recognized for her ability to convene diverse stakeholders, mobilize resources, and steward complex initiatives from concept through implementation and scale, including aligning public and private funding streams and institutional support. Her work emphasizes co-creation, equity, and long-term impact, ensuring that solutions are grounded, learnable, and able to migrate beyond pilot contexts into broader adoption.