Influential Businesswoman Awards 2025 | 21 AIM-May25012 Sustainable Packaging Design Innovator of the Year 2025 (Australia): Suzanne Haddon Creative innovation and sustainability within the packaging and design spaces is where Rooland prides itself. Home to a keen ability to craft branding and design solutions that inspire at every turn, this Wollongongbased business is led by the dedicated Suzanne Haddon who has worked in the design industry since she was 16, devising powerful designs for companies like Nike and Starbucks. We caught up with Suzanne for more about her work. Contact: Suzanne Haddon Company: Rooland Web Address: https://www.rooland.com/ Suzanne Haddon’s enthusiasm for everything design-related came from her father, a talented designer who owned and operated a studio of his own in Seattle, where Suzanne grew up. Once she had finished her day at school, Suzanne would often visit her father’s studio, sitting and watching as he created and refined packaging for his clients. Inspired by his work, Suzanne followed in his footsteps by graduating from California’s ArtCenter College of Design – just as he did – and has found design to be her calling ever since. Soon after graduating, Suzanne secured her first job with Sal Bass in Los Angeles, which was an incredible opportunity and laid the foundation for a successful career. A role followed at Maddox and Company in Santa Monica, but when her father passed away, Suzanne went home to Seattle and secured a position at Hornall Anderson Design Works. During this tenure, she worked with brands such as Jamba Juice, GE Capital, and Starbucks. Joining Starbucks’ corporate team a few years later, Suzanne quickly found herself falling in love with the brand. Over the next several years, she would work as one of its design directors, with her duties ranging from overseeing in-store packaging designs to directing the branding for international stores and packaging. Examples of Suzanne’s initiatives include moving all Starbucks stores and offices in San Francisco to 100% post-consumer recycled paper and selling a shopping bag design to the company’s store partners in Japan. 2009 saw Suzanne relocate to Australia with her husband, and it was then she founded Rooland. As Suzanne told us: “My mission was clear from the start: to rebrand and elevate smaller businesses, empowering them to compete with larger, more established brands.” She continued: “Today, Rooland works with brands across the globe, focusing on sustainability and authenticity. We help businesses uncover and showcase their unique points of difference, ensuring their stories stand out in the market.” “With expertise spanning packaging, digital, and print design, we partner with clients to build brands that are as thoughtful as they are visually striking. ” As it works towards inspiring, innovating, and elevating sustainable branding and design across Australia and beyond, Rooland ensures it invests time and effort into exploring the newest technologies, as well as giving its team space to share ideas and challenge each other to grow. This “dynamic show and tell”, as Suzanne calls it, allows creativity and collaboration to thrive, and has resulted in the launching of RooCreate, a platform for small businesses and start-ups to gain access to sustainable packaging solutions. The push to a broader adoption of sustainable practices is something Rooland has always been passionate about, but with companies of all sizes today facing increasing pressures to embrace greener ways of working – something backed by new packaging legislations – the demand for its services has never been stronger. Partnering with clients eager to innovate and create eco-friendly products is something Rooland will continue to do. Suzanne’s commitment to sustainability even extends beyond Rooland, as she is also the co-founder of Circular Plastics Illawarra – an initiative dedicated to eradicating soft and single-use plastics – and has written numerous blogs and articles on the broader topic of sustainable practices. On the back of this, Rooland today specialises in bagasse packaging, a green solution made using sugar cane byproducts moulded into different designs. Finally, Suzanne is committed to giving back to her community, seen through her work teaching third-year students at the University of Wollongong. Focusing particularly on designers, Suzanne supports and protects her students as they navigate their own creative journeys, nurturing the unique sensitives they bring to their work and encouraging them to let their own hearts, minds, emotions, and perspectives guide their stunning work. Thus, Suzanne Haddon is much more than the visionary behind Australia’s premier packaging design agency, more than a beacon of trust within sustainable packaging and graphic design, and more than our Sustainable Packaging Design Innovator of the Year 2025 (Australia). She is the inspiration behind the next generation of designers, the woman behind her clients’ amazing products, and definitely an influential businesswoman.
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