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Team

Place Leadership Academy is owned and run by Future Place Leadership AB

Place Leadership Academy is the new open innovation and event subsidiary of Future Place Leadership. The Academy's purpose is to provide a platform for cities, regions and countries to learn, develop and innovate.

Contact:
Place Leadership Academy / Future Place Leadership AB
C/O Openlab
Valhallavägen 79
114 28 Stockholm, Sweden
Registration number: 556981-5235
VAT number: SE556981523501

Invoicing: never send a paper invoice. When paying, quote the invoice number.

Who we are.

People

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Nicole van Haelst
Senior Adviser, Innovation hubs and talent acquisition
Phone:+31 654980909
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Klara Bäckström
Consultant and Place Strategist
Phone:+46 702 45 92 55
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Marcus Andersson
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Phone:+46 708 67 36 34
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Morten King-Grubert
Director of Talent and Business Development
Phone:+45 61 30 45 26
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Elsa Hedman
Marketing consultant
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Mats Segerström
Consultant, business & innovation adviser
Phone:+46 702 67 14 09
Employee

Nicole van Haelst

Senior Adviser, Innovation hubs and talent acquisition

Phone:+31 654980909

As an expert and entrepreneur, Nicole shapes the interface between place making, talent attraction, foreign direct investment (FDI) and technology. She adds value to any venture with her expertise in funding, strategy & business development, digital marketing and implementing change.

As a strategic director and advisor to regional investment policies, Nicole’s influence in Talent Acquisition and Retention transcends borders. The International Community Platform (ICP) has been the vehicle she initiated (2008) to do so. ICP is an employer driven platform to optimise the quality of life and career for global talent. She has contributed to the flourishing of The Hague and Rotterdam area as a global talent hub and worked with INSEAD to have both cities rank in the Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI). Driven by the fact that ‘business follows talent’, she has secured ‘talent’ as a solid pillar in foreign investment organisations. Nicole joined Future Place Leadership as a strategic partner in 2020.

She holds Master’s degrees in Political Science from the University of Groningen and Germanic Philology from Ghent University (cum laude).

Employee

Klara Bäckström

Consultant and Place Strategist

Phone:+46 702 45 92 55

Klara is a place strategist, with expertise in urban development and how the built environment affects people’s quality of life.

Klara holds a Master’s degree in Sustainable Urban Planning and Design from the Royal Institute of Technology. She has previously worked in both the public sector and as a consultant for Sweco and Spacescape.

Klara’s core competencies include dialogue processes with stakeholders and residents about places, sustainability assessments, development and analysis of urban qualities and managing master planning projects. She also has experience in working with children's perspective within urban planning.

Klara has also studied UX/UI-design, which has contributed to a deeper understanding for how planning processes can ensure a good user experience for a place’s different users and target groups.

Klara is a consultant at Future Place Leadership since September 2021, working with analysis and project management connected to place development. She is also the project manager for the Nordic Place Branding Conference 2022 in Helsingborg.

Employee

Marcus Andersson

Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Phone:+46 708 67 36 34

Marcus has been advising countries, cities, regions and clusters on talent attraction, business attraction, place branding, internationalisation and innovation, and has led a broad range of research and consultancy projects in Northern Europe. Marcus has worked for Baltic Development Forum, the Swedish Government, and the European Commission, with communication and management in policy areas such as cluster development, innovation, entrepreneurship and security policy, as well as with marketing in different positions.

Marcus holds an MA in Political Science from Uppsala University and an MSc. in Marketing, Business and Economics from Stockholm University School of Business, and has published a range of academic papers, articles, reports and handbooks on topics such as talent attraction, business attraction, cluster development and place branding.

Employee

Morten King-Grubert

Director of Talent and Business Development

Phone:+45 61 30 45 26

As a professor, entrepreneur and senior director, Morten brings both a theoretical and practical background to the Academy and Learning Lab. He is an experienced keynote speaker, innovator and workshop facilitator.

Morten has been part of Faculty at the DIS - Study Abroad university since 2014. As a professor he runs leadership, diversity and entrepreneurship courses and workshops to international students at bachelor level.

As an entrepreneur Morten has taken a fintech company from 0 to 5 Million Euro in annual revenue and profitability over 3 years growing the team from 0 to 10+ people.

In place branding and talent attraction, Morten utilizes his experience from having done business development for Copenhagen Capacity - the official inward investment agency of greater Copenhagen - and leading the initial talent attraction activities of the region building up the entire effort from strategy to action.

He has since used that knowledge to help regions across Europe develop best practices and has become an outspoken influencer on talent collaboration and cross regional mobility.

Employee

Elsa Hedman

Marketing consultant

Elsa is the resident marketing consultant at Place Leadership Academy. She has worked many years in digital marketing for some of the biggest media agencies in the world, based in Denmark and New Zealand.

She specialises in planning and executing digital strategy across multiple markets. After several successful years of advising clients such as IBM Nordics and L'Oréal Nordics, she has leveraged her international experience and come back to her original field of interest: Place branding and talent attraction.

Elsa brings her expertise to the clients of Future Place Leadership by coaching on marketing digital transformation. She develops the overall marketing strategy to suit the particular needs of a region. She plans, executes, analyses and reports campaign performance utilising all digital tactics: Paid social, programmatically bought and direct buy ad space, SEM & SEO, plan influencer & partnership campaigns, podcasts, anything digital really. In addition, Elsa can also plan offline activities such as print, TV and outdoor.

Elsa has an MA in International Business Communication from Aarhus University, and was one of the first Youth Goodwill Ambassadors, a talent attraction programme of Copenhagen Capacity’s. She wrote her master’s thesis in Talent Attraction and Retention in Denmark.

Employee

Mats Segerström

Consultant, business & innovation adviser

Phone:+46 702 67 14 09

Mats Segerström is a consultant, business & innovation adviser and entrepreneur. Mats has international work experience from the ICT industry with the Ericsson group, and has been posted in Milan for the Swedish Trade Council/Business Sweden, a government trade promotion agency. He has been an investment manager in a corporate incubator, and gone on to found several start-ups and focuses on innovation and entrepreneurship, innovation systems, public-private partnerships and regional development.

Mats is a registered EU Expert/Evaluator with EASME’s 2016/SME Instrument. He is a graduate of Harvard College with a major in Psychology and Social Relations, and has a Business Administration degree from the Stockholm School of Economics. He is a founding member of Nordic Place Academy.