EAT Welcomes Interim CEO, Dr. Olof Olsson

Interim CEO Dr. Olof Olsson with the EAT team

The EAT Board of Trustees is pleased to announce the appointment of an Interim CEO, Dr. Olof Olsson. Dr. Olsson began the role on October 21st and is already working alongside and reporting to the Executive Chair with a focus on organizational structure and development. Dr. Olsson’s tenure will run through the EAT Stockholm Food Forum in 2020. During this period, the Board of Trustees will continue their ongoing global search for a permanent CEO, to take the helm at the conclusion of Dr. Olsson’s work. He will support onboarding of his successor.

Dr. Olsson brings strong leadership and organizational development experience to the role. For more than ten years, extending into mid-2019, Olof Olsson was Managing Director at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC), Stockholm University. During this period the SRC grew its staff from about 20 to 150 employees, and its annual budget from 20 to 170 MSEK.

Before SRC, he developed expertise both in the biological sciences and organizational leadership. He studied Executive Leadership at the Stockholm School of Economics immediately prior to his role at SRC. He served as Programs Director at the Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Mistra) for five years. He has been Senior Advisor to the Minister for the Environment in Sweden, Senior Officer at three national Research Councils and Consultant at the Swedish Biodiversity Centre. In 1995, he took his PhD on behavioral and life-history ecology of King Penguins at South Georgia in the Southern Ocean, at Departments of Zoology, Uppsala University, in collaboration with British Antarctic Survey. Olof did his basic education in biology and geosciences at Lund University.

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