Keynote Speakers

Annika Axelsson, Founder of Dem Collective - By Dem Corporate with Ethics Included
Annika Axelsson is an entrepreneur with sustainability as foundation and driving force for the business. She will speak about how business and civil society can work together for sustainable development, and how corporations in fact can be a part of the solution: by acting as a platform and tool for change towards a better world.
Annika Axelsson is one of the founders of Dem Collective, a textile company where fair wages, good working conditions and ecological sustainability are the order of the day. Putting words into action is extremely important for Dem Collective as is overcoming cultural barriers and work together. Annika Axelsson has field experience from Africa, Asia and Europe and was a member of the CSR Board of VästraGötalands Region (VGR). She was awarded the Social Capitalist Award and has received the Folksam Environment Prize and Sweden’s Green Party’s Congress Prize.

Teresa Fogelberg, GRI’s Deputy Chief Executive - Sustainability Reporting as a key in LCM – the role of GRI
GRI has just launched G4, the fourth generation of sustainability reporting guidelines, which focus on material impacts and supply chain disclosure. Teresa Fogelberg will speak about the role of policy and sustainability reporting in defining sustainability strategies for reporters.
Teresa Fogelberg is the Global Reporting Initiative Deputy Chief Executive. As such, she is in charge of GRI’s strategic political relationships and engaged in strategic external relationships with businesses, governments, civil society and other stakeholders. She started her career as an anthropologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Teresa has long experience of development of organizations, including ILO, USAID, and Netherland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She spent eight years in West Africa, specializing in economic development, gender issues and famine-early warning systems.

Susanne Freidberg, Professor and Chair of Geography at Dartmouth College - The Renaissance of Life Cycle Assessment: a Social Scientist’s Perspective
Susanne Freidberg is an economic and cultural geographer whose current research focuses on the use of life cycle approaches to assess the footprint of food products. In her speech, she will present findings from a multi-year study of LCA’s internal culture, debates and rising real-world influence.
Susanne Freidberg is Professor and Chair of Geography at Dartmouth College. After studying anthropology at Yale University she received a PhD in geography from the University of California, Berkeley.  She has since traveled to five continents to study the expertise behind international fresh food supply chains.  She is the author of two books, Fresh: A Perishable History, and French Beans and Food Scares: Culture and Commerce in an Anxious Age.

Emma Ihre, Head of Sustainable Business at the Swedish Ministry of Finance - Implementing Sustainability into Governance of State-Owned Enterprises
Emma Ihre is the person responsible for integrating sustainability into the governance of state-owned companies in Sweden. She will address how the Swedish government influences sustainability strategies through responsible ownership in enterprises completely or partly owned by the State.
Emma Ihre is head of Sustainable Business at the Swedish Ministry of Finance. Emma has a background as a financial analyst and holds a degree in economics from Stockholm University. For 15 years, Emma has built up experience working as an advisor to investors on issues relating/regarding sustainability and ethics. She has also been on the board of Amnesty Business Group and is a founding member of Economic Shift – a non-profit foundation that helps companies develop new business models based on changing consumer preferences. Earlier this year Emma was appointed (by the Swedish environmental journal “MiljöAktuellt”) as one of the third most powerful person within the field of environment.

Rob Jenkinson, Director of Corporate Sustainability at SKF - Beyond Zero – bringing life cycle management to life in SKF
Rob Jenkinson firmly believes that an integrated life cycle approach will bring SKF and other firms sustained economic and environmental value. He will present how SKF integrates Life Cycle Management in their business and how it has influenced the work with their BeyondZero portfolio. He will also define some of SKF’s key challenges and steps going forward.
Rob Jenkinson has been the Director of Corporate Sustainability at SKF since 2010.  He began his career with SKF in 1989 and has held a variety of engineering and management roles in a range of countries, including the UK, China, USA and Japan. Rob has been very much involved in the development of SKF’s BeyondZero strategy and the Groups overall approach towards integration of sustainability.  He holds a Masters Degree in Energy, Environment technology and Economics and an Honours Degree in Mechanical Engineering.

Karin Markides, President and CEO of Chalmers University of Technology - Chalmers for a sustainable future
Karin Markides, President and CEO of Chalmers University of Technology, is proud to welcome you all to the LCM 2013 conference. Sustainable production and consumption systems are common goals of Chalmers and the LCM conference series, with “Chalmers for a sustainable future” as the main vision permeating both education and research at the university.
Karin Markides has served as President and CEO since August 2006 and she is also a professor of Analytical Chemistry. During her leadership Chalmers has developed a role and responsibility in the global society. This is demonstrated by Chalmers being members in several global organizations. CESAER, an association of the leading European Universities of Technology cooperating on policy issues, UNITECH an international exchange program with focus on leadership, performed between academia and industry and AGS – Alliance for Global Sustainability. Between 2004 and 2006, Karin Markides worked as Deputy Director General at VINNOVA, Sweden’s Innovation Agency.

André Reichel, Dr and Senior research fellow at European Center for Sustainability Research – Sustainability Beyond Growth
The “post-growth economy” is more than just a potential future: it is a new economic normality with serious implications for both policy-making and business strategies. In his speech, André Reichel will elaborate upon this future state, and present ideas and findings from his own research in the field.
André Reichel is a senior research fellow at the European Center for Sustainability Research, Zeppelin Universität in Germany and Visiting Lecturer for Ecological Economics at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. His research focuses on the implications of a degrowth society for business with a special emphasis on metrics, business models and strategies. André got his PhD in economics and social sciences from the Universität Stuttgart. From 2008 until 2011 he was heading the research cluster on “sustainability in manufacturing” at the Graduate School for advanced Manufacturing Engineering. 

André Veneman, Director of HSE & Sustainability, AkzoNobel - More value from fewer resources
André Veneman will present how a focus on the full value chain can help large corporations drive business and at the same time gain both resource and engagement benefits. He will outline AkzoNobel’s approach to sustainability, an approach that is “customer-led” and aimed at delivering more value from fewer resources.
André Veneman graduated as a Medical Doctor in 1983. André has previously worked for UNHCR as a Medical Coordinator in Emergency and Refugee situations and at Shell International as an adviser in Occupational Health Management and Preventive Health Programs. He joined AkzoNobel 1999 and in 2003 he was appointed as Corporate Director Sustainability & Health Safety and Environment. André Veneman is also chairman of the Supervisory Board of Initiative Sustainable Trade and Stichting Milieu Keur/ European Eco label.  He also represents AkzoNobel in international organizations such as World Business Council for Sustainable Development and UN Global Compact.

Philip Wramsby, Moderator of opening ceremony
Being both an experienced ceremony leader and a professional in supply chain management, Philip Wramsby has a suitable background to guide us through the opening ceremony. Philip has a M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and Management with a major focus in Supply Chain Design Management from Chalmers University of Technology and a B.Sc. in Business Economics and Administration from Gothenburg School of Economics and Commercial Law. For the last seven years he has worked for the management consultancy boutique Montell& Partners where he has focused on issues concerning corporate finance, strategy and organization. Philip has been project leader in Supply Chain related projects including footprint analysis.