Kes MccormickModerator
Kes Mccormick is Professor of Business Development and Sustainable Innovation at the Department of People and Society at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). Mccormick also hold a position at the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) at Lund University and is on the board for the Swedish Knowledge Hub in Business Management and Entrepreneurship at SLU.
Peter KullgrenSwedish Minister for Rural affairs
Peter Kullgren is the Swedish Minister for Rural affairs with responsibility for rural areas, food and land- and waterbased industries. He belongs to the party Christian Democrats and has had different roles within the party since 2005. Peter Kullgren has been Minister for Rural Affairs since 2022.
Karen EllemannSecretary General of the Nordic Council of Ministers
Karen Ellemann is the Secretary General of the Nordic Council of Ministers since 2023. She has been a member of the Danish parliament, the Folketing, since 2007 and has held a number of ministerial posts in the Danish government. Karen Ellemann has extensive political expertise in several key areas for The Nordic Vision 2030. She has been Denmark’s minister for gender equality, for the environment, and for social affairs and the interior. On several occasions, she has also been Denmark’s minister for Nordic co-operation.
Charlotta SörqvistChief Negotiator for the Swedish delegation and Chair of Working group 1 at CBD COP16
Charlotta Sörqvist is a Senior Adviser Division for Nature Environment at the Swedish Ministry of Climate and Enterprise. She is since 2017 the Swedish chief negotiator for CBD. Charlotta Sörqvist has also been chair of the CBD Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and has led negotiations on several key issues regarding implementation of the Convention. Charlotta has over 20 year of experience from working with environment and climate change and have a bachelor degree in Economics and political science from Uppsala University.
Villemo TomasdotterMember of the Nordic Youth Biodiversity Network
Villemo Tomasdotter, BSc (Sweden), is currently undertaking a master’s degree in Applied Climate Strategy at Lund University. They are an active member in the Nordic Youth Biodiversity Network (NYBN) within which they contribute to the organisation’s work to halt and reverse the biodiversity crisis. Villemo has experience in human rights and the human-nature relationship and is engaged in the interlinkages between climate and biodiversity.
Jørgen OlesenProfessor and Head of the Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University
Jørgen E. Olesen is professor in agriculture and climate change and since 2020 head of department at Aarhus University, Department of Agroecology. He has a wide research experience on the interaction between agricultural (and agroecosystem) activities and the environment and climate. He has contributed in expert panels of the EU, The World Bank and FAO. He has also contributed as leading author to IPCC assessment reports. He is currently member of the FACCE Scientific Advisory Board. He has for 2018 and 2019 been awarded highly cited researcher by Web of Science.
Lise Lykke SteffensenExecutive Manager, NordGen
Lise Lykke Steffensen is Executive Director of the Nordic Genetic Resources Center (NordGen). She has a long professional career within agriculture and life sciences in both public organizations and private industries. Lise Lykke Steffensen has for decades managed research and innovation, global business areas and worked with business developments on executive level. She has more than 25 years of experiences within resilient agrifood systems and genetic resources on both national, regional, and international level. She sits on various boards, panels and think thanks relating to agricultural research and genetic resources as well as she has received several prizes for her work as executive manager, communicator, and her professional skills. Lately, in May 2023 she was appointed by ECPGR to be the first chairperson of the European Genebank Manager Network and in August 2024 she was elected as interim head of Genetic Resources by EUCARPIA.
Michael ZöllnerStrategic Advisor in Sustainable Finance and former CEO of The Danish Green Investment Fund
Michael Zöllner strongly believes that green transition has to go hand in hand with good business. To achieve scalability and thereby the needed positive impact within climate and biodiversity. His believe is based on many years of experience from executive positions within the financial sector and as CEO for 7 years in the Danish Green Investment Fund. Every day he works closely together with many different public and private companies to succeed with that.
Kristin BørresenManaging Director, Graminor
Kristin Børresen is the Managing Director of Norway's plant breeding company since 2019. She is also a member of the International Advisory Board to Svalbard Global Seed Vault and member of the Steering Committee for the Nordic Public Private Partnership for Pre-breeding.
Anastassia KhrouchtchovaScientific Manager, Novo Nordisk Foundation
At the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Anastassia Khrouchtchova develop research-based initiatives aiming at sustainability and resilience of plant-based agriculture. She was trained as a biologist and did her PhD and postdoctoral work focusing on biochemistry and molecular biology of plants. Before joining the Novo Nordisk Foundation, she worked as Project and Portfolio Manager at the Carlsberg Research Laboratory.
Hrannar Smári Hilmarsson Director of the Icelandic plant breeding program Vala at the Agricultural University of Iceland
Hrannar Smári Hilmarsson is the director of the Icelandic plant breeding program Vala at the Agricultural University of Iceland. His research primarily focuses on the breeding and cultivation of cereal crops, with emphasis on applied agronomic research to benefit Icelandic farmers. In recent years, he has concentrated on developing crop varieties tailored to Iceland's unique climate conditions using techniques like genomic selection to enhance crop yields and adaptability. With the mission to improve agricultural sustainability and food security in Iceland's challenging environment.
Jan-Peter GeorgeSenior Scientist, Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke)
Jan-Peter George is a forest geneticist with strong background in conservation of forest genomic resources. He uses genomic tools together with forest monitoring data across Europe to inform relevant stakeholders about the urgency for conserving ash. As a private forest owner, George sadly observe every day how ash has been disappearing from his own forest during the last years. This has severe consequences for genetic diversity in European ash and -most importantly- will impact the whole forest community in the long-term. Nevertheless, he strongly believes that our work as conservationists should also be to create solutions and to learn from the past rather than doing mistakes twice. There are already more than 15 countries in Europe actively conserving genetic resources in ash. As Europeans, Jan-Peter George emphasise that we should and must collaborate to learn from each other, because tree pandemics don’t stop at national borders.
Karoline BakkeResearcher, Geno Research
Karoline Bakke has working experience from the Norwegian Agriculture Agency, The Livestock Production Research Centre, in addition to practical experience from working part time at a dairy farm. In 2020, Karoline Bakke finished her Doctoral thesis in animal breeding and genetics at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. During her education she collected data from automatic milking systems (AMS) from commercial farms, and investigated how the detailed data provided by the milking robot could provide accurate information about dairy cows milkability, behaviour, and health traits that can be used as genetic information in the breeding program of Norwegian Red. Karoline Bakke is currently working as a researcher in the Geno Research and development department, mainly focusing on collecting and analyzing data on new sustainability traits, such as feed efficiency and methane production of cows. The knowledge gathered in Genos ongoing project will provide tools that can help us further improve the genetics of Norwegian Red dairy cattle, aiming for a sustainable breeding goal balancing health, fertility, production, feed utilization, and climate.
Therese BengtssonResearcher, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Therése Bengtsson is a researcher focused on pre-breeding for host plant resistance in cereals against pests and pathogens through genomics-assisted breeding. She has extensive experience in managing Nordic public-private partnerships (PPP) in cereal pre-breeding. For seven years, she coordinated a PPP project on the pre-breeding of spring barley in collaboration with the Nordic private seed sector and academic institutions. Since 2021, she is leading a Nordic PPP project, CResWheat, which aims to enhance host plant resistance to pathogens and improve climate resilience in spring wheat across the Nordic-Baltic region.
Anna PalméSenior Scientist, NordGen
Anna Palmé is a Senior Scientist at the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre (NordGen) focusing on crop wild relatives. She has a PhD in genetics from Uppsala University and experience in genetic resources conservation and in using genetic markers to answer ecological and evolutionary questions. Currently she is coordinating a Nordic project on crop wild relatives and has since 2015 coordinated several Nordic cooperation efforts on the same theme. The focus of the projects has been on in situ and ex situ conservation, communication, and facilitating use.
