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

Anneli Pinchard

Anneli Pinchard

HR Director, Saab Group Marketing and Sales

Anneli Pinchard is an experienced HR Director at Saab. When Saab was founded in 1937, Saab’s primary aim was to provide military aircraft for Sweden. Today, Saab serves the global market with world-leading products, services and solutions from military defence in all domains to civil security. Anneli has a long history of providing extensive international HR and Business Support management both on a strategic and on an operational level.  Anneli has worked at a corporate level and provided support to small and medium sized businesses within the group. During her long working career at Saab she has held various positions and appointments: VP Head of HR Market Area Europe and EMEA, Chief Accountant, Company Secretary and UK Directorship. She has been based in the UK for the majority of her working career. Anneli has a wide experience of change management and organisational restructuring activities and has a strong business acumen. In addition to Saab, Anneli worked for 8 years at a UK based professional services firm, Goodwille, as a Senior Advisor. Her responsibilities included:  international assignments, business development, business management and operations.

Outside of work Anneli acts as a representative in London for Svenskar i Världen/Swedes Worldwide which is a non-profit and politically independent organisation that has existed since 1938. The organisation is working to increase and keep international experience and competence for Swedes Worldwide.

Lisa Christie

Lisa Christie

Interim Country Manager UK, Vattenfall

Lisa has been Vattenfall’s UK Director of Public & Regulatory Affairs since April 2018, and was appointed Interim Country Manager in April 2023.  Her previous experience includes running the Public Affairs team at Centrica plc, working for public affairs consultancy Politics International, and a number of roles in Westminster working for the Liberal Democrat Party.

She is a corporate affairs expert with significant experience advising Board members and implementing integrated strategic corporate communications strategies.

Lisa is a graduate of the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne where she gained an undergraduate degree in Politics, and an MA in International Political Economy.

Petter Wihlbäck Mathisen

Petter Wihlbäck Mathisen

Business Development Manager, Sana Labs

Petter is the Go-to-Market DRI for Sana, a Swedish-founded AI company transforming how organizations learn and access knowledge.  He has over 12 years experience of B2B sales. Petter is responsible for the team at Sana working their Rest of Europe / Rest of World region, having spent 2023 building up UK sales and operations. He is astute at coaching and mentoring up-and-coming intrapreneurs that are looking to take ownership and make an impact

Lars Olsson

Lars Olsson

Stena Line

Lars is the former General Manager Travel at Stena Line, one of the largest ferry operators in the world, taking you to Ireland, the Netherlands and beyond. Lars was also presented with the Chambers Extraordinary Member Award in 2023.

Ciaran O'Malley

Ciaran O'Malley

Vice President of Partnerships, Trustly

Ciaran is Vice President of Partnerships at Trustly, having joined as Head of Commercial Strategy in 2016. He has extensive experience in fintech strategy, product value propositions, go-to-market processes, as well as building direct and channel sales. Alongside this, he is involved in Open Banking in the UK and other industry initiatives such as SWIFT's Pay Later API standard. Prior to Trustly, Ciaran worked in investment banking. Firstly at Credit Suisse in a derivatives quant & programming role. Laterally in Financial Institutions M&A at SocGen and Nomura advising wealth managers, banks, and insurers.

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.

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.

Stewart Elliston

Stewart Elliston

Associate Director, Business Development, Freeths LLP

Stewart is an Associate Director in the Mayfair office of Freeths, a top UK full-service law firm with a global reach.  He has over 20 years’ demonstrated history of working in the legal sector. Stewart is responsible for the successful execution of the firm’s strategy in the South Region of Freeths, which includes the Bristol, Milton Keynes, Oxford and London offices.   He is astute at coaching and mentoring lawyers on the best strategies to implement that will help them achieve their personal and departmental BD and financial objectives. 

Erik Wenngren

Erik Wenngren

Co-founder, Spintop Ventures

Erik is a co-founder of Spintop Ventures, an EIF-backed VC company investing in early stage Nordic SW enabling technology companies with global ambitions. Spintop (started in 2009) has invested and supported Nordic companies from seed to high-value, even Unicorn, exits to global giants like Zynga, Cisco and Klarna. He is well networked in the start-up ecosystem across Europe, has supported and mentored numerous early stage companies and has as a Business Angel also invested in some 25 start-ups. Erik started to get involved in early stage companies in 2001 after many years in the financial industry mainly in fund raising and IPOs working at senior level positions at SEB, BNP Paribas, Danske Bank, and NYSE Euronext. Erik studied at Lund University, has an MBA from Columbia Business School and is a Fulbright Scholar.

Eleonor Duhs

Eleonor Duhs

Partner & Head of Data and Privacy, Bates Wells

Eleonor has worked with governments, businesses, public bodies and third sector organisations to find practical solutions to meet their needs. She was the UK Government’s lead lawyer in negotiations on the GDPR.

She has extensive, in-depth knowledge of the GDPR. She represented the UK in meetings in Brussels, drafted text for inclusion in the legislation, and worked with the European Commission, representatives from other EU Member States, regulators and stakeholders to develop the regime.

Since moving into private practice, Eleonor has advised clients on a wide range of privacy law issues including tracking or monitoring of data subjects, collection, use and retention of personal data, data sharing, data protection in the context of commercial contracts, data breaches, international data transfers, and the impact of Brexit on data protection.  

She enjoys working closely with clients to distil complex legal issues and provide pragmatic, practical solutions. Clients have commented on her “very clear, logical” approach and have described her as “a real pleasure to deal with, always unflappable and good-humoured as well as professional”.

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.

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.

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

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 2024 is now open for applications. Please apply before 28 January 2024. The programme will start in February 2024 and finishes in November 2024. 

Participation fees

Young Professional or SCC member: £595 + VAT

Non-members: £1190 + VAT

                                                                           Begin application

Patrons

Nordic Capital
RPC (Reynolds Porter Chamberlain LLP)
Skanska UK Plc
Essity

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