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Nicolai Tangen inspired the audience at SSE

This week, SSE had the pleasure of welcoming Nicolai Tangen to the school. He is the CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), more commonly known as the Norwegian Oil Fund. Along with other guests such as the Ambassador of Norway, Aud Kolberg, faculty and staff from SSE discussed what Sweden and Norway could learn from each other regarding education, entrepreneurship, and business.

The visit and the lecture were co-organized by the Norwegian Embassy and the Norwegian-Swedish Chamber of Commerce. The collaboration with these two organizations is something that SSE treasures, according to SSE President Lars Strannegård.

"To be able to collaborate and have good relationships with your neighbors, your cultural brothers and sisters, is something we deeply treasure and become painfully aware of during these times," he says.

Nicolai Tangen has an interesting and inspiring background: he started up a successful hedge fund and has a master’s degree in art history and social psychology, as well as being a chef. He is also the owner of the world's largest private collection of Nordic contemporary art, the Tangen Collection, with art stretching from the early modernists in the 1920s to the mid-1990s. He has also actively funded initiatives within arts and education through the AKO Foundation. SSE President Lars Strannegård gave him an introduction about SSE Art Initiative and his view on how art can be implemented in education.  

The theme of Nicolai Tangen's lecture was "defining moments". He shared various events during his life that have played a key role in shaping his next steps.

 "Some defining moments can’t be planned for, but you can still be prepared. What you need is grit, patience, education, and confident humility", said Nicolai Tangen, as he gave a deeper explanation to what those four words really meant to him.

One of the faculty members who joined the discussion, and the lecture was Martin Carlsson-Wall, Associate Professor and Director of the Accounting and Financial Management Center of Excellence at SSE.

"The Norwegian Oil Fund is a unique organization. They finance 25% of the entire Norwegian public sector at the same time as they are one of the largest investment funds in the world. As such, being a hybrid that combines both public and private sector logics is very interesting. I also found it exciting to hear about their work in integrating sports psychology into the investment processes. I think Swedish companies can learn a lot about from the sports world in terms of teamwork, individual resilience and how sport organizations work with stakeholder engagement”, says Martin Carlsson-Wall.

SSE is looking forward to further inspiring keynotes during this Spring, as we now have the possibility to invite external speakers to our campus again.

For further information, please contact Nick Andersson, Senior Advisor, Corporate, Development and Alumni Relations at SSE: nick.andersson@hhs.se

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