Anna-Maija is a finance and business development professional with +20 years’ of experience in identifying innovations and scalable business models in various industries in an international context with execution capability, a can-do-attitude, holistic perspective and passion to build on Nordic strongholds. Currently she works at Nordic Innovation which is part of official Nordic cooperation contributing to making the Nordic region a leading region for sustainable growth, entrepreneurship, innovation and competitiveness. At Nordic Innovation she is responsible for Nordic Scalers program. The vision of the program is to make the Nordics the leading region in the world not only for starting up but also for scaling up businesses. Nordic Scalers program provides 10-weeks hands-on and customized support for up to 10 Nordic scale-ups at a time who want to grow their business even faster. Before joining Nordic Innovation, Anna-Maija worked with the Finnish start-up ecosystem at Tekes (current Business Finland), evaluating the business performance and execution capability of start-ups and coaching them in their business and innovation development. She has also hold has had various international assignments related to innovation policy development and in the field of innovative service businesses

Svein Berg has a wide and long experience from working with innovation and business development both nationally and internationally. He started as Managing Director at Nordic Innovation in April 2017. He came from the position as Director Region Americas at Innovation Norway where he has worked in various positions since 2006.

Berg also has experience from the private sector and has previously served as Director at Norway Seafoods ASA and Managing Director of the Norwegian Seafood Council AS. Berg has also served as Senior Vice President in the Norwegian Industrial and Regional Development Fund. He holds a Master Degree in Economics from the University of Oslo.

Ola Ahlvarsson is a Swedish entrepreneur and athlete based out of Stockholm. Ola has since the mid 90’s been at the cutting edge of digital entrepreneurship as an entrepreneur, investor, thought leader and advisor. He has a deep understanding of how businesses can embrace digital opportunities and technology earning him several international awards and recognitions, such as Wired Magazines top technology thinkers 2015 and Young Global Leader at World Economic Forum.

Speaker and Moderator

Ola is one of Sweden’s most popular international speakers and moderator. Ola has been chosen to host and lead discussions in some of the world’s most prestigious events, amongst them at the World Economic Forum in Davos, DLD in Munich, World Knowledge Forum in Seoul and Le Web in Paris. Ola is also the co-creator, host and moderator of SIME, a thought leader summit held in Stockholm every year hosting 2000 leaders from the Swedish and the International Economy. As a moderator, he has interviewed heads of states, global top executives, pop stars, super-entrepreneurs, hackers, opinionated kids and brilliant academics. As a speaker, Ola has an amazing ability to engage and combine personal experience with the latest trends and learnings and a unique way of combining in-depth domain expertise with excellent stage performance sprinkled with passionate curiosity.