Swedish Chamber of Commerce | Next Generation Leaders
The Next Generation Leaders

The Next Generation Leaders

The Next Generation Leaders is a twelve-month mentorship programme, offering a unique opportunity for professionals to benefit from exchanges of knowledge, experience and skills across generations and sectors. This exclusive programme includes group workshops, high-level networking, and one-on-one mentoring sessions with accomplished senior industry professionals from the Swedish-British business community.

Contents of the programme

This twelve months programme connects ambitious talents with experienced international business professionals from across all fields and sectors. The mentors are all experts in their fields, and have international business experience.

The programme includes a series of four joint group workshops and seminars, facilitated by the course director, and involving both mentors and mentees. In addition, mentors and mentees meet for one-to-one mentoring sessions over the course of the year, whether it’s face to face, over Zoom or phone. The programme is open to London based mentee applicants, ideally a couple of years into their career. All members of the Chamber, including Young Professionals, enjoy the discounted price.

The Programme will help you to

  • Accelerate your personal and professional development
  • Gain unique insight into the London business community and business culture
  • Advance towards your existing career goals and aspirations
  • Identify new areas of professional interest and/or career paths
  • Develop new business skills, knowledge and tools
  • Develop your personal brand
  • Grow your professional network

Mentors 2024-2025

Richard Hildebrand

Richard Hildebrand

Co-Founder, TandonHildebrand

Richard Hildebrand specialises in all aspects of corporate work and in particular UK corporate finance transactions and UK and International mergers and acquisitions (both public and private). He is also experienced in other areas of corporate work including joint ventures, commercial contracts and general company advice. Richard has been particularly active in the Alternative Investment Market advising new entrants, listed companies and nominated advisers/brokers on a wide range of transactions across a variety of industry sectors.

Tania Tandon

Tania Tandon

Co-Founder, TandonHildebrand

Entrepreneur and co-Founder of TandonHildebrand - a legal and business advisory service firm. Learn more about the business at www.tandonhildebrand.com.

Peter Marshall

Peter Marshall

National Physical Laboratory 

Peter has  held various roles in Telecommunications over 25 years working with Operators, Suppliers , Research Bodies and Start-ups to develop their business. Working with Ericsson, he is a frequent public speaker and communicator to cross-functional business audiences about 5G use cases and products from around the world.


He regularly takes part in major speaking events and lead high profile demonstrations on leading edge technology linked to 5G and beyond. He is  regarded as a unique highly informed communicator with effective visionary skills who has developed various ecosystems centred around 5G.

Björn Odenhammar

Björn Odenhammar

Head of Virgin Media O2 Costumer Team, Ericsson UK & Ireland

Björn Odenhammar has an extensive experience from the Telecom industry, and has held multiple leading positions covering both Strategic Product Management and Sales roles at Ericsson. Björn has also worked in several countries and learning about new cultures is one of his key drivers.

He is currently Key Account Manager for Virgin Media O2 and a member of the Ericsson Leadership team for UK & Ireland.
His main focus is to introduce new technologies and services that can create great business for the operators. The ongoing introduction of 5G is so exciting, since it enables brand new applications for both Consumer and especially Enterprise customers. Even more important, it holds the promise to help the evolution towards a more sustainable society.

Matthew Smith

Matthew Smith

VP, Head of Key Account Service Providers, Ericsson UK & Ireland

For a quarter of a century with Ericsson and originally Marconi (acquired by Ericsson 2006); Matthew has worked across product management, sales, presales, and marketing in a variety of leadership roles, commanding budgets in the tens of millions of pounds, and P&Ls in Billions of SEK.

He currently heads up the Service Provider business in the UK, a diverse set of customers including Regional Service Providers, Enterprise and Public Sector such as Mission Critical applications in Public safety, Defense, Rail and Utilities. For the 6 years prior to this new role he was VP, Head of Live Marketing at Ericsson global, located in Stockholm: running all major events (like Mobile World Congress, Barcelona) our experience centres such as the Ericsson Imagine Studio Kista, and broad innovation demo portfolio. He led Ericsson through the pandemic by rapidly digitalising the marketing function to keep in touch with key external audiences (and each other!) whilst gracefully exiting face-to-face activities, and put in place all the transformation needed to emerge on the other side with a hybrid setup far ahead of the rest of the industry.

Matthew has relocated half a dozen times in his career, and has happily been at home in Stockholm (twice), California, Istanbul, Doha, and now again in the UK. He has been leading teams of many different scales since he was 25, and has been actively mentoring and realizing the benefits of strong mentors himself throughout his career. A practitioner of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), he most enjoys coaching aspiring leaders who want to focus on their interpersonal communication skills and also with career planning challenges. In his spare time over the past few years Matthew has enjoyed testing his mental and physical limits in ultra-marathons.

Lotta Malm-Hallqvist

Lotta Malm-Hallqvist

Cheif Executive Officer, LLandBrand

Since founding her own agency more than a decade ago, Lotta has been a dominating force in the global advertising industry. She has held c-suite executive positions at McCann Worldgroup, Samsung, Mother, and MDC. She was Women to Watch, which recognizes outstanding women in marketing, advertising and media. Beyond her success in the advertising industry she also founded 4 ventures within fashion, production and communications.

Jamie Griffin

Jamie Griffin

Kry/Livi UK

Jamie is the Head of Commercial for Livi UK. Livi, known as Kry in Sweden, is the largest provider of digital healthcare in Europe, offering patients consultations with clinicians via the Livi app in the comfort of their own home. 

Jamie’s responsibilities cover all revenue-driving partnerships in the UK. This includes various NHS providers, private insurers and businesses that want to offer their patients, customers or employees better access to healthcare, via on-the-day access to GP consultations. 

Jamie graduated from the University of Leeds in 2009 and has had various commercial leadership roles across the retail, healthcare and technology sectors. 

Sarah Hindle

Sarah Hindle

Handelsbanken UK

Stephen Handscomb

Stephen Handscomb

LKAB Minerals

Stephen is a dynamic executive and non-executive director with an MBA and experience in various sectors (including Minerals, Construction, Chemical, Education and Not for Profit) with demonstrable success in all roles held. He is responsible for the UK and Construction Division which includes 10 manufacturing plants across the UK, manufacturing, GGBS, Gypsol, High Temperature Minerals, Foundry, Limestone filler, Fertiliser, Magnesium Products and Polymers & coatings. Stephen is a member of the Institute of Concrete Technology (MICT) and on the ICT Council. He is also a  fellow of the Institute of Directors and the vice Chair of Dudley and Wolverhampton Citizens Advice. 

In addition to the above Steve has a love of clocks, watches and horology in general as well as Rugby

Wilson Clarke

Wilson Clarke

Löfbergs UK

Programme Director

Elisabet Vinberg Hearn

Elisabet Vinberg Hearn

Co-founder Think Solutions & AI Forum Advisory Board member

Elisabet is a leadership strategist and business owner with extensive experience in how to build winning cultures and teams, facilitating change success with client organisations all around the world. She has co-written three multi-award-winning leadership books, including Amazon bestselling “The Leader’s Guide to Impact” (FT Publishing). Her 4th book ‘Supercharged Leader: Develop your mind and skillset to deal with anything’ will be released by Pearson Business May 2024. Elisabet is a leading voice on future leadership, leading transformation, cultural differences in an international world, and inclusive and innovative business cultures.

Application

The Next Generation Leaders Mentorship Programme 2025-2026 is now open for applications. Please apply before the 25th of August 2025. The programme will start in September 2025 and finishes in August/September 2026.

Participation fees

Young Professional or SCC UK member: £595 + VAT

Non-members: £1190 + VAT

Email selina.johansson@scc.org.uk your interest.

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