Management experience from New Media Science and Cell Network. Applied research experience from the Norwegian Computing Center Co-founder of Alliance Venture in 2001. MSc. degree in Computer Science from the University of Oslo and INSEAD IEP.

Bijal Nagrashna is the Startup Business Development Manager for the Nordics & Baltics with AWS. Prior to that she headed Developer Marketing for the Amazon Appstore in the UK.

After graduating from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Bijal started her career as an analyst for BearingPoint consulting in Washington DC focusing on public sector development and privatization with the US government and donor agencies and later for a mergers & acquisitions firm in Budapest working on investment deals spanning CEE and various industries.

She later transitioned to institutional marketing for an emerging markets asset management firm that managed USD 24 billion in assets back in DC and then decided to take about 2 years off to travel throughout SE Asia and Europe.

During her travels, she found her passion for technology startups and joined US-based TripLingo, an award-winning language learning app geared to international travelers, started a consulting practice to provide business advice to startups and co-founded a company that bridged the gap between large organizations and startups.

Børge Ousland is established as the leading polar explorer of our time. He has done numerous solo expeditions to both the South and North Poles and solo crossings of both the Antarctic and the Arctic from coasts to coasts. In 2007, Børge and expedition partner Thomas Ulrich set of from the North Pole to follow in Fridtjof Nansen’s historical expedition from 1895 through Frans Josef land until they reached the remote Eva-Liv Island and followed the historical route through the archipelago until Cape Flora, three months after they left the North Pole. Nansen’s journey is regarded as one of the most daring in polar history and for the first time someone has followed in his footsteps.

He is one of the few speakers represented by National Geographic Speakers Bureau; a part of the National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.  He has also held several lectures for the Royal Geographic Society in London.

Jeanett is Head of strategy at the Entrepreneur and Startup division Innovation Norway. She has good knowledge about the startup ecosystem both nationally and internationally. At Innovation Norway, she has participated in advising the government's new plan for startups and has been central in the strategic work of entrepreneurship and international business development at Innovation Norway. 

Previously, she has worked within bank/finance, e-commerce and social media. 

Co-founder and COO at Inzpire.me. Inzpire.me connects influencers & brands, and has just raised 8 MNOK and grown to 7000 influencers within a year of operations.  She spent two years in Boston as Creative Director creating and growing the brand in a tech startup.

Carine Zeier commercializes early-stage technology, both with larger corporates and startups that are in the scaling stage. She is a combination of business angel, startup developer and consultant for intrapreneurs.

She has been at several startups and scaleups, amongst them, Fast Search & Transfer until the acquisition by Microsoft. She is a also co-initator of the Norwegian chapter of Nordic.AI, a community for Nordic AI startups, and the venture hub PierX currently being built at Aker Brygge. 

Carine holds a MBA from Boston University.

Philipp started his career as a Management Consultant at Arthur D. Little in the Telco Industry and afterwards as a Tech-Analyst at i5invest, looking at technology and business models from around the globe. He started his first company, KochAbo, in the food e-commerce space, and built it together with his team from 0 to 7-figure revenues with a footprint in 4 european countries. The VC-funded company was sold to Marley Spoon in 2015. Currently, Philipp serves as Managing Director at Pioneers Ventures, doing early-stage investments in digital startups all over Europe.

Bjorn is an Investment Manager at Swedish VC firm Industrifonden where he is involved in startups like Soundtrack Your Brand, Funnel, Soundtrap, and more. Prior to joining the venture capital world, Bjorn worked as a management consultant and on the startup side as a founder and business developer.

Lauga was born in Iceland, raised in Norway and schooled at Berkeley in New York in International Business Management. She is a commercial head with an international background in marketing and sales management. She co-founded Mesher in 2012, they specialize in intelligent software for online retailers. In 2014 Lauga co-founded United Influencers (formerly United Bloggers) at StartupLab. UI is a digital influencer marketing agency working exclusively with over 200 influencers in the Nordics like Zlatan, Messi and Isabella Lowengrip. Today she is the Head of the Lab at StartupLab, a leading Nordic incubator based out of Oslo Science Park. StartupLab houses 82 technology startups and invest early phase capital through Founders Fund.

Kriss is an investment professional in VC and BA fund-of-funds investments, former business angel, entrepreneur and management consultant. Kriss has substantial track-record in management and business consulting, "hands-on" experience in co-founding and developing businesses in product and service sectors, as well as investing as a business angel himself. Kriss holds an MBA degree with distinctions from INSEAD (Singapore, France).

Henrik is part of the investment team at Northzone, based in Stockholm. He began his career in consulting at McKinsey & Company, working with clients mainly on digital and marketing & sales strategy. Before joining Northzone, he was at mobile gaming company King, working with data driven strategy and business development. Henrik holds a MSc in Industrial Engineering & Management from KTH. You can follow Henrik at @henrik_grim.

Christian is a startup advisor and mentor to early and growth stage entrepreneurs in B2B SaaS and enterprise software. He has a geographic focus on Germany, the Nordics & Baltics, and Central/Eastern Europe. Christian has had a 6 year career in Venture Capital as Principal and Venture Partner at Wellington Partners in London and Munich, as well as Paua Ventures in Berlin. Previous to his investor role Christian had a successful five year career in technical product sales and key account management at ORACLE, the global leader in enterprise software. Christian has an MBA from INSEAD.

Tormod is the guy who climbed Mount Everest in a single day, and made a first ski descent from the summit.

Tormod Granheim has always had a passion for extremes. He climbed Mount Everest in a single day, and made a first ski descent from the summit. He has done a first winter ascent on the Troll Wall, was the first Nordic climber to climb all 4000m summits in the Alps and spent more than two months on a reed raft on the North Atlantic.

He is now investing in startups, most actively as partner and business developer in the Swedish startup Smartster.

Frauke Mispagel studied Business and Economics at WHU, ESADE and York University. She has worked for several international corporates such as JP Morgan and founded a company offering carbon neutral solutions for businesses. After doing Business Development for Rocket Internet’s Zalando she joined the Bauer Media Group as Head of Digital Acquisitions. In 2014 she was responsible for investment processes at Axel Springer and has been the Managing Director of Axel Springer Plug and Play Accelerator since 2015.

Christine Spiten is Co-Founder and Strategy Manager at Blueye. 

She holds a M.Sc in Industrial Economics and Tech. Management from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and Regulation Technique and Robotics at UFRJ in Rio de Janeiro, in addition to International Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley. 

As a Sustainable Engineer and ROV Expert she has a heart for the Ocean and a genuine passion for new technology, business development and innovation. 

Ton is partner at Keadyn VC - a seed stage VC from the Netherlands.  Next to that, he's Investor in Residence at StartupDelta, working closely together with HRH Prince Constantijn, on a mission to break open the European investment scene.

His personal goal is to empower one million entrepreneurs by 2020. That's also why his organising dinners and other get togethers throughout Europe. Currently travelling to 30 cities in 6 months time, meeting with key influencers in the tech scene and trying to discover 'the secret sauce' & the 'origin stories' of those respective cities. He's talking to founders, toptier VCs, superangels & community leaders in order to get that firsthand knowledge sharing going.

Ton also founded Angel Island (angelisland.co) last year with the purpose of connecting the unconnected. He rented an island near Amsterdam in 2016, some tall ships and got together a curated group of 200 angel investors & 200 early stage founders and 'locked' the island. No pitching allowed, no keynotes, no name tags and a strict "zero asshole policy". The idea was to level the playing field and meaningfully connect these two groups.

Eilert Giertsen Hanoa director of Visma - SMB Software Business Unit, founder of Mamut, Chairman and investor in Kahoot! and an investor in FoundersFund, board member Dagens Næringsliv AS and former chairman of ICT Norway. He established his first IT company at the age of 15 in 1986. Ten years later he founded Guru Software later named Mamut with a vision to simplify life for small businesses. Mamut ASA was listed on Oslo Stock Exchange in 2004 and had approx. MNOK 500 in revenues when it was acquired by Visma in 2011.

Arne is a proven tech-entrepreneur with several successful exits to his name. In 2002, Arne co-founded and bootstrapped Accurate Equity, a FinTech SaaS and professional services company within equity based incentives design, accounting, valuation and disclosure, until he sold it to a major PE in 2015.  As Chairman of MeaWallet, a FinTech SaaS mobile payment infrastructure company, Arne led the re-structuring and sale of the business in June 2016 to Seamless Distribution AB (Nasdaq; SEAM).  Today, Arne has investment portfolio of tech-companies in various stages and spends most of his time actively adding value to these.

Nick helps people to build and grow business that make the world a better place.

Currently he is Chief Digital Officer for the city of Groningen (NL) and co-founder of The Big Building, a 15,000 sqm space for entrepreneurs and startups.

As designer and builder of (innovation) ecosystems, he gets to work with individuals, startups and corporates to inspire, educate and support them to step outside of their comfort zone, whilst making their ideas come to life.

Anders joined Arkwright as director this May coming from the  position as VP business development and head of M&A in Kongsberg Gruppen. In Kongsberg Gruppen he was the midwife for the establishment of Kongsberg Digital and has also been responsible for several acquisitions and investments such as eSmart Systems, Trondheim based Eelume and KBC Advanced Technologies in London. He was the founder of Vetro Solar back in 2007 and is an eager advocate of Arkwright X. Anders is a long distance triathlete having reached the Gaustadtoppen summit as a participant in the Norseman Extreme Triathlon.

SusanLindner founded the award-winning Lotus Public Relations in 2002, growing it into one of the top 20 fastest growing PR firms in NY by 2005. In 2009, recognizing the powerful advent of social media, Lotus became Emerging Media - a full service BRAND, PR, MKTG and SOCIAL agency dedicated to helping disruptive companies reach their maximum potential. With more than 15 years experience in public relations, Susan has worked with innovative Fortune 500 brands (BP, National City Bank, Xerox), dynamic tech companies (Akamai, XMPIE, Equitrac, PokerStars), more than 40 international startups, and has helped 10 companies to get acquired in the last 10 years.

The Holmes Report, Bulldog Reporter, PR News, Golden Bridge Awards, Top PR Agencies and the Stevie Awards have recognized her and her team at Emerging Media among the top ranked agencies, year after year.

Ingibjörg Meyer-Myklestad is communications director and heads the Corporate Affairs department in Argentum. She has a background from DNB, where she worked as an analyst in Oslo and New York. She also has several years of experience as a communications consultant in Burson-Marsteller and has worked as a journalist. Ingibjörg holds a masters degree from the Norwegian School of Economics.

Marianne Bratt Ricketts, CEO at VIBBIO, has spent most of her adult life living and working abroad, building businesses across several fields, from winter sports to graphic design. She is now back in Oslo - with her latest venture, VIBBIO, together with co-founder Stine Norum. Video is rapidly taking over the online space, replacing many forms of communications. VIBBIO is creating a tailored smart video concept, building video technology that will enable a video-first toolset for businesses.

Their startup journey so far has included quick decision making; testing, failing and learning – with most days including a complete lack of any type of comfort zone. Just like they like it.

Katja has long experience building global software and digital internet businesses. Katja is a co-founder of MOOR Capital, a nordic early-stage technology investment partnership. Katja is a co-founder of Pipebeach, a global leader in interactive voice
services, acquired by Hewlett-Packard. 

Katja has held senior business development positions at Ericsson and the Ericsson Group, responsible for the new interent products, founding among others, a new business unit for internet communication products. Katja was at Nokia in its early days, where she was responsible for the global system sales
offering.

Katja is passionate about new technology and ways to change the world for the better.

Based in Tallinn, Estonia, Felipe is the EMEA team's new kid on the block. A dedicated entrepreneur since the age of 18, he's been part of Startup Chile and Startup WiseGuys. Felipe has pitched at dozens of events and conferences, including LeWeb, FinovateEurope, Visa Future Insights and many more. Email marketing is in his blood since one of his first startups was an email marketing service for promoting events in Chile. He has a diploma in web development and professional crossmedia creative. Felipe is focusing on growing the SendGrid startup community at events and accelerators in the EMEA region.

Speak to Felipe about: Community Development, UI/UX, Marketing, Project/Product Management, Pitch and Startup Accelerators, Launching and Planning.

Anne Worse is Portfolio Manager at Bakken & Bæck, a world-class team of startup builders, designers, developers and artificial intelligence explorers who turn big ideas into great products and ventures. 

She has initiated and co-founded the co-working space Nordic Innovation House in Silicon Valley, explored new business opportunities in the renewables industry and was the first CEO of the Norwegian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association. She has experience as a co-founder, angel investor, member of Board of Directors for startups and VCs, focusing on early stage ventures, growth and internationalization. 

Operating Partner at Nordic Makers. Lawyer by training that moved into venture capital. Impressed by mission-driven and risk-taking founders with stellar plans and visions to execute.

Erling Magnus has acquired a broad business acumen in the five years building a globally renowned brand at Db along a great team, and learned a lot quickly about B2B SaaS with Cesura. Combined with experience as an extreme sports athlete, it demonstrates that he is comfortable and work well in ambiguous, risky and mentally challenging situations. He is a believer in mindfulness, Stoicism and flow for productivity and balance.  

Currently he works with freelance consulting and startup advising, especially interested in tech with potential to positively impact society. 
 

Anniken has enjoyed a dynamically diverse career in the communications industry, spanning over 20 years. She is currently the founding partner and co-owner of 657 Oslo, Norway’s largest co-working space for the creative industries, as well as communications agency Superblaise, and the disruptive UT: student agency.  During her career Anniken has worked as a strategic advisor for most of the biggest brands and companies throughout the Nordic region, including many international companies.  Anniken earned a Master of International Marketing Management in 1994 from The Norwegian Business School in Norway, École Supérieure de Commerce de Grenoble in France, and the City University Business School in London.

Sean Percival is a serial entrepreneur and investor, former partner at 500Startups and at 500Nordics. He is also formerly the Founder and CEO of Wittlebee, the kids clothing club and Vice President, Online Marketing of Myspace. He is currently Operating Partner at Katapult Accelerator, Operating Partner at X2 Labs Stavanger.

Sean is currently based in Oslo, Norway but spends a fair amount of time in both Silicon Valley and Los Angeles

Mikael von Dorrien is the initiator of Nordic Innovation House in Silicon Valley and now funding via Nordic Innovation. 

He is an experienced executive in international high-tech business with focus on market and customer development for start-ups and early stage companies.

His experience covers both investments, leading and developing high tech start-ups, as well as developing distributor networks and sustainable relations.

He has formerly initiated the Business Development program Born Global and #NordicMade. He has been the manager of seed and early stage funding at Almi/Innovationborn and CEO in High-Tech Companies including subsidiaries in Japan, the US and Singapore. 
 

Karen Elisabeth is currently holding the role as Strategic Advisor Partnerships, Digitalization and Business Development in DNB. She is driven by her passions in innovation processes, stimulating the startup ecosystem and connecting people to create energy and impact. She holds an exec MBA in Strategic Management from NHH and a Master in International Relations from Universidad de Deusto, Spain/ University of Dublin, Ireland.

Christian holds a computer science degree from Oslo University, 20+ years experience with digital transformation, mainly in the media industry, founder/co-founder of 5 startups (no unicorns). He joined DNB April 2016, working with innovation processes, strategic partnerships, APIs and platforms, collaboration with startups, and generally striving to make DNB a technology company.

Erling joined DNB Asset Management’s global technology team in April 2014. Erling started his career as an intern in our team during the summer of 2011 and subsequently spent three years with Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) in London. Erling holds an honours degree in Finance from The University of Melbourne, Australia, and an MSc in Financial Markets from EDHEC Business School, France.

Hilde is a partner in Momentum Partners, an investment company based in Bergen that invests in innovative and ambitious companies in their early phases (seed and early venture). Based on our varied experience from both industry and consulting, we take an active role in developing and scaling our portfolio companies. We believe in bringing competence and involvement to the table, not only capital. 

Before joining Momentum Partners Hilde spent 5 years with the Boston Consulting Group. She holds a M.Sc. of business and administration from NHH in Bergen and has her bachelor degree from Université de Toulouse 1 in France.

Agnes Dyvik is an entrepreneur, founder and CEO of the media startup VIO, Norway’s largest on-demand service for fully digital magazines and newspapers.

She has a bachelor degree in Business and Administration from Copenhagen Business School and a masters from NTNUs School of Entrepreneurship. She has valuable teamwork experience from her voluntary position in the student organization AIESEC, as a liaison between students and companies, and from her internship in the start-up at Mesh co-working space in Oslo.

Norwegian native, Vidar Brekke, has spent 20 years in New York, where he has held leadership roles in companies like JPMorgan, Ogilvy and Converseon, as well as founded and sold several startups. Recently he became the CMO of Highsoft AS, creator of Highcharts, one of Norway's most successful startups, and global industry leader in data visualization solutions for the web.

Kari is former Group Executive Vice President for Product and Corporate Center since 2005. Her previous experience are as State Secretary at the Ministry of Finance, consultant at McKinsey & Co., adviser to Høyres Stortingsgruppe and consultant in the Finance Department of the Finance Department. She holds a civil economist degree from Norway's Business School and Master of Business Administration, MBA, from the University of California at Berkeley.

Fintech Mundi a unique ecosystem for global fintech growth, and proven track record for scaling and commercialization of products to grow business internationally. Susanne is the Chairman of Payr, VIO Media, Safety Academy and Board Director at Nordax Bank. She is an experienced international executive in the industries of Financial Service, Financial Technology, Cards, Payments and Insurance. She has held several EVP and SVP positions at Nordea, she was a board member at MasterCard Europe Advisory Board and the Executive Chairman of Zwipe.

Hans Christian is a Nordic entrepreneur and angel investor with a passion for helping startups, and facilitating corporate-startup collaboration and innovation. A true connector and catalyst for collaboration in the Norwegian and Nordic startup landscape. Currently Partner & Program Director at TheFactory, a Nordic startup accelerator focusing on fintech, insurtech and regtech.

Kimberly Larsen is a uniques media talent, with more than 18 years experience from multiple sides of the creative industry, where she has been an actress, journalist, show host, director, concept developer, script writer, manager, casting agent, producer - and now founder.

Kimberly sees possibilities where others see obstacles, and creates national brands of unknown artists.  She won national and international entrepreneurship awards the year she established her company in London.

Today she runs the hiring platform, timetoRIOT.com, developed specifically for the creative industry.

Sally is the founder of “The Triple Effect”, an innovation consulting firm focused on developing best practices in corporate innovation, entrepreneurial community development and technology coaching (DigiLearn). Through her work, she has developed several entrepreneurial centres and programs in Atlantic Canada such as Planet Hatch and Startup Zone. Her clients are often organizations who struggle to think outside the box with new products or services, she used her tickle truck of tools and frameworks to run design sprints, rapid prototyping sessions and so much more. Through her work, she has recently been named as one of Canada’s top young entrepreneurs representing Canada at the G20 Young Entrepreneurs Summit in Berlin. 

As a community leader, Sally is actively involved with the startup community through her work with Startup Weekend (Operated by Techstars) and has traveled around the world facilitating events. She currently serves on the national Board of Directors for the Community Foundations of Canada (CFC), a charity with $4.8B worth as assets within its network. She currently serves as Lieutenant in the Canadian Forces working with the Royal Canadian Air Cadet Program, a past TEDx organizer and 21Inc Leaders Alumni. 

Norwegian native, Vidar Brekke, has spent 20 years in New York, where he has held leadership roles in companies like JPMorgan, Ogilvy and Converseon, as well as founded and sold several startups. Recently he became the CMO of Highsoft AS, creator of Highcharts, one of Norway's most successful startups, and global industry leader in data visualization solutions for the web.

Ole Dokka is a multidisciplinary leader and strategist, working in the intersection of innovation, design, technology and digital business, since the beginning of the internet economy in 1995. He has held leadership positions in several big companies in Norway, among them Telenor and the global energy company, Statoil.

In Statoil he was responsible for developing and implementing digital and media strategies, new visual and interactive brand identity and a new global marketing programme. This work received multiple Norwegian and international awards. From 2012 he joined the corporate innovation team and headed up Statoil´s open innovation efforts globally.

He left Statoil in 2014 to take up a new position as Strategy Director in We Are Int., a digital business design & development company based in Oslo. In March 2016 he left We Are Int, and founded Rocket Grace Group in order to pursue specific new opportunities and lay the strategic foundation for more projects and partnerships in the space, health and education sector.

Pål T. Næss is the director of entrepreneurship and startups at Innovation Norway, the government’s most important instrument for innovation and development of Norwegian enterprises and industry. His responsibilities include the capital instruments for startups: grants, loans, pre-seed and seedfunds as well as competence and networking programs both in  and outside of Norway.  During his career at Innovation Norway, Pål has been director of Innovation Norway Canada and advisor to Norwegian startups in the Oslo region.

Previous to Innovation Norway, Pål was part of the founding team of Gelato (Optimalprint.com), one of the most successful Norwegian startups, where he served as COO during the initial 6 years of the company.

Hege V. Barnes is the Director of the New York office of Innovation Norway, the Norwegian government’s most important instrument for innovation and development of Norwegian enterprises and industry. Hege is responsible for the strategic development and daily operations of the New York office, and is passionate about utilizing and growing our services to the maximum value for our customers. With almost 20 years of experience working within the field of internationalization, business strategy, marketing and communication,

Hege has developed an extensive network in North America. Hege initiated the building and growth of our successful Entrepreneurial Marketing program (part of our Global Entrepreneurship program portfolio), the Norway New York Accelerator (a partnership with ERA), as well as the newly launched Nordic Innovation House that will be hosted at WeWork in New York City.

Åse Pettersen Bailey is the Business Development Manager at Innovation Norway San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Åse is the Program Director of TINC (Tech Incubator) accelerator program in Silicon Valley and has been building and running the program since its start in 2012. TINC Silicon Valley is an intensive 4 week accelerator program for Nordic tech startups to validate their business model, product market fit and global scale potential.

She has10 plus years experience supporting and advising Norwegian technology companies in their market validation, developing competitive advantage and entering the US market from Silicon Valley.

Previous to Innovation Norway Åse has over 10 years experience in international product development and management working at startups and major enterprise software and hardware companies in Silicon Valley. Åse has lived and worked in Silicon Valley for the last 25 years and has an extensive network in the leading technology environments.

Lise has more than 10 years experience from banking, finance and the corporate landscape. After being part of founding the Norwegian rock festival Tons of Rock, she got in touch with her entrepreneurial spirit and left her day job at Schibsted to join StartupLab in January 2017. Lise holds an Executive MBA in Corporate Finance from NHH and is a Certified European Financial Analyst.

Fredrik Syversen is the Director of Industry Development at IKT-Norawy, currently working in Albania and Kosovo. He works within four main areas: eHeatlh and how to bring transparancy and tools for self-care, Smart energy and how to unlock the potential of energy saving, Entrepreneurship and how to make the best ideas into great companies; and aid and how to use the knowledge of IKT-Norway and the Norwegian IT-business community to build similar sustainable organisations throughout the world. 
 

Lars Jørgen is a Venture Capital Analyst with Norway’s largest Venture Capital Investor, Investinor AS, managing 4,2 billion NOK. His main focus areas are on software, hardware and lifesciences. Co-built Investinors portfolio of “early stage” IT-investments, and working closely with Investinors VC-portfolio for the last 3 years.  Previously working in corporate banking for Nordea Bank. His education is from the Norwegian School of Economics in Bergen, and IT-interest from building computers since he was 12 years old.