Shela Gobertina von Trapp
Most sustainability commitments are made on a reporting cycle. The returns arrive on a generational one. That gap is where credibility leaks: targets set for the next quarter, consequences inherited by people two decades out.
Shela Gobertina von Trapp helps organisations think in generations, applying legacy thinking to corporate sustainability and brand longevity, grounded in two decades of sustainability practice and direct descent from the family behind The Sound of Music.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Shela Gobertina von Trapp
- She brings twenty years of sustainability operating experience to a story most people only know from the screen: founding partner of the Circular Electronics Partnership and a decade leading corporate sustainability at Office Depot across the US and Europe.
- She gives boards a usable frame for decisions whose payoff sits well beyond the current leadership’s tenure, which is the practical problem behind most long-term commitments.
- She is the one speaker who can connect a globally recognised family legacy directly to corporate questions of brand stewardship and long-term value, which makes the argument land rather than feel borrowed.
- Through the Global Electronics Council, managers of the EPEAT ecolabel, she has worked inside the procurement standards and circular-economy roadmaps that large buyers actually use.
Biography highlights
- Founder and President of Celebrity Legacy and co-founder of the Georg & Agathe Foundation, with the heritage project vonTrapp.org
- Founding partner of the Circular Electronics Partnership (CEP), the cross-industry roadmap toward a circular electronics value chain by 2030
- Director of Global Relations at the Global Electronics Council, managers of the EPEAT environmental ecolabel
- Roughly a decade in corporate sustainability at Office Depot, a Fortune 500 company, across the United States and Europe
- Master’s in Energy and Environmental Analysis from Boston University, with a Bachelor’s in Environmental Analysis and Policy awarded Magna Cum Laude
- Great-granddaughter of Captain Georg von Trapp and Agathe Whitehead, and granddaughter of Johanna von Trapp, portrayed as Marta in The Sound of Music
Biography
Most companies plan in quarters and report in years. The choices that shape a brand compound over decades, long after the leaders who made them have gone. Sustainability lives in that gap, judged on short cycles and paid for over much longer ones.
Shela Gobertina von Trapp spent two decades working that gap from inside large organisations. At Office Depot, a Fortune 500 company, she led corporate sustainability across the United States and Europe. At the Global Electronics Council, managers of the EPEAT ecolabel, she became a founding partner of the Circular Electronics Partnership, an industry roadmap toward a circular electronics value chain by 2030.
What makes her perspective unusual is its source. She is a great-granddaughter of Captain Georg von Trapp and Agathe Whitehead, and a granddaughter of Johanna von Trapp, portrayed as Marta in The Sound of Music. She has spent years researching how that family held its identity through war, exile, and reinvention, and what allowed the name to outlast the people who carried it.
She now puts the same question to companies in commercial terms: how does a brand earn the right to last? Drawing on the family archive and her sustainability work, she helps boards treat reputation and environmental commitment as assets that are stewarded across generations, the way the von Trapp name was.
Key speaking topics
- Corporate sustainability and the circular economy
- Long-term value and legacy thinking
- Brand longevity and stewardship
- Heritage and historical preservation
- Leadership lessons from the von Trapp family
- Values-based and purpose-driven leadership
- Sustainable procurement and electronics circularity
Ideal for
- Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG teams moving from reporting cycles to long-term substance
- Boards and family businesses weighing brand stewardship and succession across generations
- Heritage brands and organisations whose long-term reputation is itself a core asset
- Leadership and culture programmes wanting a substantive story about values that outlast their founders
Audience outcomes
- A way to test today’s decisions against their consequences decades out, not just the current cycle
- A concrete account of how one family held its name through war and exile, and why that matters for institutions that want to last
- Sustainability reframed as a long-horizon asset that boards steward, illustrated with circular-economy examples from the electronics industry
- Reputation and brand understood as inheritances, built deliberately or eroded by default
Talks
The verified story behind the film, told by a direct descendant, and what a family that turned displacement into reinvention shows leaders about identity under pressure.
Key takeaways:
- How the real von Trapp story differs from the screen version
- What held the family together through exile and reinvention
- How a clear identity functions as an asset when circumstances change
How legacy thinking reframes corporate sustainability as a multi-decade asset rather than a reporting obligation.
Key takeaways:
- Why short reporting cycles undervalue sustainability’s real returns
- How heritage families and organisations steward value across generations
- What boards can borrow from legacy thinking when setting long-term commitments
Two generations inside the military-industrial story, from the inventor of the torpedo to a submarine commander, and what their choices reveal about technology and consequence.
Key takeaways:
- The link between Robert Whitehead, credited with inventing the torpedo, and Captain Georg von Trapp
- How one family navigated invention, warfare, and its aftermath
- What multi-generational hindsight offers on technology and responsibility
A walk through three centuries of Central European history via the families who shaped it, and why those struggles still resonate.
Key takeaways:
- The roles of the Zrínyi, Rákóczi, and Széchenyi lines in Hungarian history
- How national identity is preserved across centuries
- Why these histories remain relevant to questions of sovereignty today