Our Speakers

Anya Ernest

  • FULL FEE DONATED TO WITGBG
    Anya Ernest is an experienced innovation leader with a dynamic career spanning roles at Polestar and RISE, specializing in product development, design, and data analysis. With a strong background in both industry and teaching, she combines practical expertise with a passion for advancing technology-driven innovation.
    Anya is currently a finalist for Innovation Leader in the private sector

    Genre topics: Leadership in tech, How to retain female tech talents

Ellinor Otter

  • FULL FEE DONATED TO WITGBG
    Julia Strandberg is the founder of INKLUDERINGSBYRÅN where she coaches on gender equality, diversity, and inclusion. She focuses on how inclusion enhances growth, drives innovation, and positions organizations as attractive employers.

    Julia gives lectures in the corporate sector, municipalities, networks, and is a regular speaker at the Forum on Gender Equality.

    She helps companies initiate and build their strategic work on gender equality through analyses, mapping, and action plans for change management. To achieve real change, her focus is on the organization's culture and attitudes. By starting the process with leaders' attitudes, unconscious bias, and leadership styles, knowledge increases, and the change work becomes successful. When leaders show the way, employees are more likely to embrace the change. This also enables the transformation of recruitment processes and the creation of an inclusive culture.

    Genre topics: Diversity & Inclusion, Leadership Coaching, Equality in Practice.

Julia Strandberg

  • Ellinor is a fearless entrepreneur, coach, writer, & inspirational speaker who wants to empower women and companies to live their truth and reach their full potential. Her goal every day is to make the tech industry more equal and diverse. She has a background in sales, tech and most recently tech recruitment with the recruitment company We Exist where she was the Co-Founder & COO. She is a Communication Hacker at Women in Tech Gothenburg and on the Advisory Board for the Front End Developer Course at Medieinstitutet. Book her today if you want your company and/or life to level up, be more authentic and reach its full potential! Based in Stockholm.

    Genre topics: Equality, Female Empowerment, Business Coaching, Balancing motherhood & work, Entrepreneurship & Spirituality.

Dr. Magdalena Pfaffl

  • Dr. Magdalena Pfaffl is a researcher and entrepreneur. Magdalena went from being a production manager in the mining and construction industry to researching the innovative potential of remote villages through looking at future human settlement on Mars. Through her research she pioneered the understanding of small villages as heterotopias, immensely diverse and innovative places that are an important part of meeting the challenges of the twenty first century. Magdalena is matching city professionals to the village where they will thrive through her company, Ares Habitats and is the chairperson of Mars Society Sweden.

    Genre topics: the innovative power of heterotopic villages, what settling Mars can teach us about life on Earth, the optimistic mindset as a driver for innovation, equality in male dominated industries.

Susanna Glenndahl Thorslund

  • Susanna is an advertising executive who swapped agency life for multidisciplinary studies in sustainability, ethics, and innovation. While being both a recurring guest lecturer at universities and running a startup in AI, she joined Women in Tech to advocate gender equality issues. These days, she helps global companies collaborate with tech startups within mobility and connectivity.

    Genre topics: Why innovation and inclusion go hand in hand, sustainability and innovation, AI, ethics and inclusion, AI and creativity, Rewrite the Code.

Liz Rider

  • Liz Rider is a thought leader on the topic of leadership. Having run her own business for over 14 years consulting to large corporates and then spending 5 years within Volvo Cars, where she was Global Head of Leadership, she has a lot to say on the area. Liz is an Organisational Psychologist and Associate fellow of the British Psychological Society. She passionately believes that companies are stuck in the past and need to change the way they operate and to be more human centric in their approach. You cannot motivate people, but you can provide the environment where people are engaged, inspired and motivated to be their best! Liz has a growing following on LinkedIn and regularly posts about human centric organisations. Genre topics: Human centric leadership, Female leadership – the missed business opportunity, Women in tech, The future of work, Companies cannot transform without their people, It’s not all about the tech!

Christina Bengtsson

  • Christina is a military officer, author, speaker, and world shooting champion. She is an educated technician on the JAS Gripen fighter and is trained at US Army Marksmanship Unit. She is the first female head of the European Liaison Office, CISM, and has been recognized with the Swedish Commander-in-Chief’s coin. With her international reach, Christina is considered a global authority on the topic of focus and is often referred to as the Focus Icon and even the female version of James Bond. She demonstrates why focus is a “must-act-issue” for today’s society and is on a mission to create positive impact by helping current and future generations improve their habits of mind and strives to move our world from blur and superficiality to clarity and quality.

    Genre topics: Female power, empathy and leadership.

Hannaneh Yazdi

  • Hannaneh has a diverse background professionally and an analytical mindset. Her intuition and path between heart and mind challenges her to appreciate problem-solving in complex situations. Gaining Industrial Engineering and Project Management degrees led her to start her career at Volvo Cars and a member of various strategic leadership teams. Fascinated by the interface of advanced technology and human beings, she established the first joint research collaboration between Volvo Cars and Karolinska Institutet focusing on biometric and cognitive measurements of frustration in driving. She also developed the concept of Cognitive Diversity at Volvo Cars. She leads the Human Leaders Community of Practice at Volvo Cars, focusing on modern leadership and inclusiveness for the community. She was a speaker at TEDxKI 2022, a keynote speaker at leadership foras, designed and led workshops and seminars, and moderated panel discussions.

    Genre topics: Journey from diversity to authenticity, Leading your diverse team, Creating belonging and inclusiveness in your team, What makes us frustrated, Frustration Vs. Flow state.

Iveta Zaklasnikova

  • Iveta is a communication, executive and leadership coach and trainer. Her passion is to help women in tech become unapologetically confident communicators and leaders (which, let’s be honest, can be freaking hard in a male-dominated industry). Furthermore, Iveta is an adventurous soul - she enjoys riding a motorbike and living in other countries (she lived in 13 countries and is still counting!).

    Genre Topics: Leadership, Communication skills, Equality, Gender Pay Gap, The importance of female leadership in tech, DEI, Public Speaking, Imposter Syndrome.

Elisabet Svensson

  • Elisabet Svensson, M Sc Electro technology, is an energy catalyst and entrepreneur who has held the positions as Founder, Operating officer and CEO. She has held strategic positions in global companies such as Volvo CE and SKF. Today she is working at SKF with Digital Innovations spreading new ways of working cross the Globe. Elisabet is eager to share challenges, learnings and successes from her career. She has hands on experience leading transformations in Global companies. Elisabet Svensson is Chairman of the board of Chalmers Studentkårs Promotion AB who is specialized in employer branding.

    Genre Topics: How to win the Eco-system game and increase revenues from partnerships, Perform and transform through agile way of working, Leadership through fun and positive influence, How to create a strategy and execution plan.

Mikaela Aare

  • Mikaela is the definition of a rebel. A career counsellor that went her own way in 2016 and launched her business Rebel Wonderland - a digital ecosystem for professional growth. Since then she's disrupting what a career entails through coaching, keynote speaking, NFT illustrations and community building. Brands and organizations hire Mikaela to bring a fresh new perspective into the business and give concrete tools for their employees' growth.

    Genre topics: What is NFTs? A journey into the future, Career building for the next generation, How to build an authentic personal brand, How to build a digital community and turn your audience into raving fans.

Patricia Alvarado Salas

  • Patricia is an energetic, foreign-born female entrepreneur and inspirational speaker who wants to encourage women and companies to fill their daily lives with joy, fun, positive energy, and self-confidence through dance, fitness, culture, and music. Based in Stockholm, she has a background in Branding, Marketing, Communication, and Sales in small, and medium size companies and non-profit organizations. Currently, she is on the Executive Board of I Love Venezuela Sweden.

    Genre Topics: Personal vs. professional development, Personal branding as an employee, The importance of taking care of yourself, Well-being, Being honest with yourself, Foreign-born female entrepreneurship, Discovering you again - Chapter Sweden a story of self-discovery and cultural Immersion, Zumba therapy as my Savior in Sweden.

  • Marlene is a former elite soccer player with Champions League silver and has played the national team. She has a burning desire to help tech companies to speed up growth in a company - both through AI as well as improving the customer journey and product . She works in the intersection of innovation, AI and methods. Marlene has been CEO of RaceONE, a startup with customers like Göteborgsvarvet and Vätternrundan and 500.000 users. She has also helped 20+ tech companies on how they can improve growth through experiments and AI.

    Genre topics: How AI can help companies, Growth Hacking, Improving the Customer Journey, User/Customer Psychology, Experiments, Elite athlete mindset in a company.

Marlene Kanto

Viveka Rydell-Anderson

  • Viveka Rydell-Anderson is an experienced chief executive officer (CEO and VD) of several healthcare organizations that she has led successfully from Startup or turn-around/transformation stage through growth to sustainability or exit strategy. She is President of the international Healthcare Informatics Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Northern California, and Advisor to DAYA Ventures, a Swedish FemTech powerhouse. Viveka is a trained lawyer, trained at Uppsala Universitet and University of California at Berkeley, and holds a Master of Science in Clinical Informatics Management from Stanford University. She has started two startups and is an expert in digital innovation, Health Tech, startups and transformation in the social impact space. In 2013 she was awarded Swedish Business Woman of the Year un USA, and was nominated Women in Tech Mentor of the Year 2023.

    Genre topics: Leadership Lessons from the US and Sweden, Leading Startups in Healthcare, Healthcare Innovation – How to Bring it from Dream to Reality, How to Build Your Teams, How to Build for Success and Inclusion, Achieving Success in Social Impact Business Models by Building Clear Vision and Empowering your Diverse Teams.

Sofia Christiansen

  • Sofia is the positive digital woman you put on stage when you want to be amazed of how easy it is to bring your customers to the table, working with your digital brand or balancing your 24 hours between being a mom and a multiple income stream entrepreneur. With one foot in the big companies’ board rooms and the other one in the start-ups’ living rooms, she gives advice and coaches on how to work with a customer-centric approach, creating a strong digital brand or designing your business idea to make it comprehensible and saleable. Sofia is not only the founder of BANG digital, but she has also experiences from companies such as H&M, Willys and Volvo Group Digital & IT. But her most important job? Being a loving and cheering mother to her son, Axel.

    Genre topics: Working with a Customer-centric Approach: Give the customers what they want, and not what you think they want!, Digital Branding: How to create strong brands and a saleable business idea in the digital world, Digital Identity: We are all digital people living in the digital world,Momtrepreneur: How to be a calm entrepreneur and a loving and supporting mother at the same time

Jenny Lundkvist

  • Jenny is a humanistic biotech engineer passionate about the concept of holistic talent, women’s health in the workplace, inclusive technology and health innovation. She is the co-founder of Daya Ventures, a pioneering femtech innovation hub. She is also running her own freelance agency Labbrock® and is the Chief People Officer & board member at Women in Tech Gothenburg. In 2023, Jenny was a diversity role model finalist in Nordic Startup Awards.

    Genre topics: The importance of applying the future of work in the context of the next generation of technology, science, and innovation.

Sofia Brandt

  • Sofia is the visionary CEO and co-founder of Birds Relations, an innovative couples app on a mission to revolutionize relationships. She could talk for hours about the importance of relationships for our overall health and happiness. She is passionate about mental health tech, purpose-driven leadership and user-centric innovation backed by data. Sofia is also an enthusiastic ski tourer and free rider, spending most of her free time with her husband and two kids in the mountains.

    Genre topics: Loneliness kills - relationships are as important to our health as diet and exercise. Happy relationships don’t happen by chance - how to build a relationship that lasts a lifetime. My learnings from building a couples app startup - while at the same time almost crashing my marriage.

Annaam Butt

  • Annaam is a passionate leader in tech and a strong advocate for diversity, equality and inclusion. Annaam believes in giving back to the community through volunteering for non-profit organizations and is a former WITGBG board member. As an aspiring servant leader, she places great value in the power of pushing herself out of her comfort zone. For this reason, Annaam likes sharing her experiences being a woman in tech, a leader in tech and too often, a minority in tech. She's also a hackathon enthusiast and loves talking about how organizations can boost internal innovation through experimentation. Agile ways of working are another area of interest for Annaam where she likes drawing from her own experiences and learnings. Annaam is an enthusiastic speaker with diverse speaking engagements under her belt who aims to expand her skillset across new horizons.

    Genre topics: Leadership in the corporate world, How to be an influential servant leader, Driving hackathons to boost innovation & experimentation in organizations, Driving agile change in an organization, Challenges that women face in tech (raising awareness & driving change), Lack of diversity (beyond gender) in tech and the importance of being more inclusive.

Cristina Söderberg

  • Cristina Söderberg is a business strategist, behavioral scientist, NLP Master, entrepreneur, public speaker, and author that holds the DTM International award in public speaking, and is a Ted-talk Coach for speakers at TedX Stockholm. She has over 18 years of strong experience in the telecom industry as a leader heading international matrix organizations within Finance, IT, Supply Logistics, and HR in fast-paced transformation, who has been nominated to category "Årets Chef” by the leadership magazine Chef Magazine year 2015 and 2016. Cristina’s proficiency in her unique skill set of multiple disciplines allows her to transport her audience to an inspiring adventure of ingenious insights to grow.

    Genre topics: The Alchemical power of Self-Leadership, Boost your unique presence on stage and everywhere else, Cultural Integration Insights, Career Shift Journey.

Ellinor Axelsson

  • Ellinor Axelsson is an energized sustainability analyst, coach and entrepreneurship lover. During the day, she is working with measuring and reporting on sustainability to make the fuzzy green world more distinct. During the night, she is coaching TEDxGothenburg speakers by combining both the feelings of the audience and the advantages of a structured and square script. Ellinor has previously faced the challenges of starting her own company in the male dominant transport industry, building a credible sustainability career as a young woman, and being a hypersensitive human in a compact environment. Ellinor is a part of the 2021 33 sustainability talents under 33 list by Aktuell Hållbarhet.

    Genre topics: How to measure sustainability, Learnings from failing a startup and How to be confident in spotlighting your emotions.

Klaudia Mur

  • FULL FEE DONATED TO WITGBG
    Klaudia Mur is the co-founder of Jolint, a pioneering company in DEI technologies that is transforming how organizations approach diversity, equity, and inclusion. Jolint is building the first data-driven platform to deliver measurable improvements in DEI outcomes, employee well-being, and engagement.

    With a passion for changing the world, Klaudia discovered network science as the key to turning her innovative ideas into actionable solutions. Through Jolint, she is driving change one company at a time by introducing objective, quantifiable methods to foster inclusion and equity in the workplace.

    Klaudia is also an engaging speaker on AI and bias, sharing insights into how technology can be harnessed to create fairer and more inclusive systems.

    Genre topics:

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