Keynotes

Berit Svendsen

Berit Svendsen has long experience with leading large, complex organizations. Berit started as a researcher at Televerket's research institute in the 80s and worked at Telenor until 2018. She had a number of roles, including being responsible for all Telenor's operations in Scandinavia. After working as head of international investment in Vipps, she is currently the Head of FIS Nordic World Championships in Trondheim 2025.

Berit is involved in several areas of Norwegian business and industry. She is at heart a tech enthusiast and curious about innovation and development. In 2016, Berit was named one of Europe's fifty most inspiring women in the technology world by Inspiring Fifty, and in 2017 and 2018, she was named the most powerful woman in Norwegian business by Kapital. She describes the key to success as a leader as being able to create diverse and well-functioning teams.

In her keynote "Building high-performing, interdisciplinary teams in various contexts", Berit will share experiences from building high-performing teams in various contexts. With the assertion that high ambitions and interdisciplinary teams are important for successful innovation, good results and value creation in the business world, she will also deal with the question: What are organizations looking for when recruiting candidates today?

Julien S. Bourrelle

Julien’s work focuses on helping individuals and companies to better benefit from diversity. He holds lectures internationally about cultural differences using humor and simple illustrations that are developed at Mondå Forlag (Mondå Publishing). He founded Mondå Forlag which publishes books focusing on social interactions across cultures and other aspects of cultures. There he published amongst others "The Social Guidebook to Norway" and the upcoming book "How Culture Shapes Behaviours".

Originally from Canada, Julien lived, studied, worked, learnt the languages, and adapted his lifestyle to the local cultures of five countries. He is educated as an astronautical engineer (BEng., MSc., MSc) and moved to Scandinavia in 2009 to take a doctoral degree at NTNU in Norway.

In his keynote "How culture shapes behaviours - Collaborating in a diverse environment", Julien will focus on how diversity and culture can influence interdisciplinary collaboration and teamwork. He will also touch upon needs related to this within future work life.