Born in Lørenskog, from 1995 Eriksen Søreide studied law at the University of Tromsø, while at university she joined the Conservative Party and got involved in local politics. In 2000 she became a member of the Conservative Party Central Executive Committee and Chairman of the Young Conservatives of Norway.
Helge Aasen has been the Chief Executive Officer of Elkem. During his 29 years at Elkem, he has acquired a broad industrial experience of most of the company’s different functions, from marketing and sales through operations to logistics and purchasing.
Helge Aasen holds an MSc in Engineering from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), and has participated in the executive leadership development program at IMD in Switzerland.
Helge Aasen is Chairman of the Norwegian Industry Association (Norsk Industri) and Eyde Cluster. He is a board member of; Elkem ASA, Borregaard ASA and China National Bluestar (Elkems largest shareholder).
He joined Telenor as an advisor, and later became Manager for Business Development, where he was part of setting the strategy for growth in Asia. Since this he has been CEO of Dtac and Uninor. He has also been key in M&A activities and most recently entered the market in Myanmar.
Prior to joining Telenor Sigve Brekke had a political career starting with several positions in the Labor Youth Organisation (AUF). He served as State Secretary of Defence in Norway from 1993 to 1996.
Prior to joining DEA, Maria Moraeus Hanssen had been working as the CEO of ENGIE E&P International and Head of E&P Business Unit in the ENGIE Group in Paris for two years. Maria looks back to a broad spectrum of jobs in management and operations in the Norwegian oil and gas industry such as Investment Director at Aker ASA (2008 - 2013), Senior Vice President Gas Supply and Infrastructure at Statoil ASA (2007 - 2008), Vice President / Offshore Installation Manager at Hydro ASA (2006 - 2007), to name but a few.
Maria graduated in "Petroleum Economics and Management" from IFP School - Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Pétrole et des Moteurs, Paris, in 1992 and holds a degree in "Petroleum Engineering" from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, in 1989. She is on the Supervisory Board of Alfa Laval Corporate AB and has served on several boards including Yara International ASA, Hafslund ASA and Det norske oljeselskap ASA.
Co-Founder, SecDev Group, a digital risk firm; and oversees projects in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Advises various UN agencies, the IADB, the World Economic Forum Global Risk Report, the World Bank and McKinseys. Faculty at Singularity University. Fellow, University of Oxford and the Graduate Institute in Geneva. Member: Global Agenda Council on the Future of Cities World Economic Forum (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/robert-muggah/) Has given several TED talks and is a regular speaker at World Economic Forum in Davos. PhD from the University of Oxford.
Professor of Security and Development at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London and is a leading scholar in the field of security studies. He served previously as Director of Studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London and on the Commission of Inquiry set up by the Norwegian Government to examine Norway’s military, humanitarian and development contributions to allied operations in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014. Berdal is a graduate of LSE and Oxford University and is a member of the Academia Europaea.