Katrina Spade

Founder & CEO

Katrina (she/her) first conceived of the idea of a sustainable alternative to conventional death care practices in 2011. Since then she invented human composting and has worked tirelessly to bring the process to the world.

In 2017, Katrina founded Recompose, a Public Benefit Corporation based in Seattle and the world’s first human composting company. Recompose started accepting bodies for human composting in December 2020.

Katrina has been an entrepreneur and designer since 2002. Her background is in project management, finance, and architecture, with a focus on human-centered, ecological solutions. While earning her Masters of Architecture, Katrina invented a system to transform the dead into soil, which is now patent-pending. In 2014, she founded the 501c3 Urban Death Project to bring attention to the problem of a toxic, dis-empowering funeral industry.

Katrina has a BA in Anthropology from Haverford College and a Masters of Architecture from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has been featured in the Guardian, NPR, Wired, Fast Company, and the New York Times. She is an Echoing Green Fellow, an Ashoka Fellow, and a Visiting Social Innovator at Harvard Kennedy School.