About Speaker
Nathalie Ketterle has been a passionate part-time sheep farmer for over 25 years now. After studying economics and working worldwide for an international bank, she gave in to her true passion - sheep and wool. At her ark-farm among other farm animals, she is breeding two rare indigenous sheep breeds, Alpine Stonesheep and Coburger Foxsheep. All their products are sold directly from farm to shop. Nathalie Ketterle is also the founder and head of “Kollektion der Vielfalt”, an association of sheep breeders of rare indigenous sheep breeds in Germany. For almost 20 years they have been collecting, processing and selling their wool and woollen products together directly to the consumers from “sheep to shop”. In 2018 the wool project of the Alpine Stonesheep became an EU model project of the European Commission within their program “Preparatory actions on EU plant and animal genetic resources in agriculture”. For more than 10 years, Nathalie Ketterle has been involved with projects all over Europe to develop breeding programs, to establish action plans and to support sheep farmers, associations, regional governments, foundations, et cetera… to preserve the diversity of their indigenous sheep breeds in their typical landscape, to support and preserve old handcraft traditions and to give back value to European wool. In addition, since 2010 she is a member of the advisory board of ATELIER – laine d`Europe and since 2023 she is the vice-president of the European Wool Association A.I.S.B.L, an international non-profit association founded 2019 in Biella and registered 2022 in Belgium. The European Wool Association is dedicated to promoting European wool and wool products and increasing their value and that of sheep production.