Board of Directors
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Erlend Bø has spent twenty-five years in the investment management business, spending most of his career working for famed bond investor Jeffrey Gundlach at TCW. He has also worked for Angel Oak Capital, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. He currently works as a private investor and advisor to start-ups.
Erlend was born in Bærum, Norway, and studied Electronic and Electrical Engineering at NTNU, Norway, and the University of Surrey, England, before moving to California. He also spent a year as a Norwegian Royal Palace Guard.
Erlend is the President of the Norway House Foundation. He is also a board member of the University of Surrey Alumni Foundation and is a committee member for the Napa Valley Ride to Defeat ALS and Walk.
Erlend lives in Mill Valley, CA, and in his spare time, he can be found skiing in Tahoe, biking on Mt Tam, or surfing the California coast.
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From diplomacy to VC, and from corporate to startup. In 2021, Gro Dyrnes left her position as a diplomat and executive in Silicon Valley and joined Ivaldi group as their Chief Commercial Officer, and their main investor, Norselab, as an investment partner. She is currently SVP for Xplora technologies in North America.
It was time to practice what she had seen and preached over so many years. Originally from Norway and educated within business administration and economics, she has always had roles in the intersection between tech and business, innovation and operations and her philosophy both as an investor and executive is to lead by doing. With a base in Silicon Valley her ambition is to combine the best of both worlds and leverage Nordic industrial advantages combined with data insight with a net positive impact on our society.
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May Roen has worked in strategy, finance operations, and HR for 20 years. For the last 10 years, she has managed finance operations for tech start-ups in the Bay area, many with international operations and global presence. Besides finance, she has managed HR, tax, and compliance. She is currently the CFO at Lookback, a venture capital-backed Bay Area software company, started in Sweden. She is also a co-founder and part-time CFO in Pathogenomix, a Santa Cruz bioinformatics company.
May was born in Norway and relocated to Santa Cruz in 2011. When she is not working or volunteering she loves spending time with her two kids and husband, going on road trips exploring California, enjoying Santa Cruz nature and wineries, walking or running on Westcliff, or reading books on Cowell's beach.
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Kristin Sandven Huuse is a lead product manager at Cisco. With a wealth of experience as a seasoned leader, she has successfully led and launched multiple hardware, software, and services solutions, delivering tangible results.
Kristin possess a strong acumen in strategic planning, effective communication, business development, problem-solving, leadership, and data analysis, all of which have contributed to achieving measurable business outcomes and overcoming challenges in diverse industries.
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Gry Rabe Henriksen took up her post as Norway’s Consul General in San Francisco in August 2021. She started her diplomatic career in the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2000 and has worked in areas such as trade negotiations, commercial affairs, East Asia affairs, humanitarian affairs and human resources. She has previously been posted to the Norwegian Embassy in Buenos Aires as well as the Norwegian Permanent Mission to the WTO in Geneva.
Gry holds a master’s degree in international relations from the University of New South Wales, Australia, and a bachelor’s degree in political science, economics and geography from the University of Oslo, Norway.
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Jan Olaf Gaudestad has an MBA from Santa Clara University, a Master’s degree in Physics from University of Maryland, College Park and a Master’s degree in Physics from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He started his career in the Norwegian Marine Corps where he reached the level of sergeant.
Jan Olaf works at Wooptix, a European semiconductor fab equipment company focusing on inline wafer metrology solutions for blank and patterned silicon wafers in semiconductor device manufacturing. He is also serving as an independent director at the board of the private equity owned fabless, pin electronics, semiconductor company ElevATE with HQ in San Diego.
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Born in Oslo, Rune has also lived in Japan and the UK for extended periods before moving to the United States. After completing his MBA at MIT he has made the Bay Area his home.
Rune’s career is in financing renewable energy projects. With over 20 years of international experience in renewable finance, telecommunications, enterprise software, and management consulting, he has a proven track record of delivering game-changing technology-based solutions to the market.
Rune is actively involved in the local Nordic community and is currently President of the Norwegian Club of San Francisco, a non-profit organization with a 125-year history.
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Born and raised in Norway, Viil Lid has lived in Italy, Netherlands, and Hawaii before settling in Northern California where she currently leads design research and strategy at Adobe.
Viil holds an interdisciplinary PhD in Communication and Information Science from University of Hawaii, and a Master of Information Science from Bergen University, Norway. Her professional background spans across strategic leadership, technology development, scientific research, entrepreneurship, and media production. She is passionate about developing innovative user-centric technologies that help people reach their goals, whether it is for work, health, education, art, or play.
When she is not working, Viil enjoys nature, creativity, travel, and adventures.
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Arne Morkemo is a Manager with San Francisco Shipping Service, Inc. (SFSS), providing destination management , shore side logistics, and transportation services for the Bay Area maritime industry.
He studied international trade, economics, business, and politial science at UC Berkley, and his specialties include event conceptualization, contract negotiation, fundraising, budget development, and event execution.
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Trond Petersen is Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Haas School of Business, and Director of the Peder Sather Center. Petersen does research in the areas of social inequality and quantitative methods. He has investigated the role of employer discrimination in creating inequality in wages, hiring, and promotions between men and women, as well as the role of family adaptations in this. He draws on large-scale quantitative data from the U.S. and Scandinavia, including quantitative data on large firms.
Petersen received a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin (1987). Before coming to Berkeley in 1988 he taught in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University (1985-1988) and after coming here spent two years teaching in the Department of Sociology at the University of Oslo (1992-93, 1996-97).
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Olav Solgaard is Professor of Electrical Engineering and the Director of the Edward L. Ginzton Laboratory. His research interests include Optical MEMS, Photonic Crystals, Atomic Force Microscopy, and solar energy conversion. He earned his Ph.D. degree from Stanford University and his doctoral dissertation was the basis for the establishment of the firm Silicon Light Machines (SLM).
Solgaard has authored more than 300 technical publications and holds 50 patents. Professor Solgaard came to Stanford with the support of a Royal Norwegian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Fellowship in 1986 and was named a Terman Fellow at Stanford for the period 1999-2002. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters, and the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences.
