Autumn Conference 2025 — speakers’ CVs

Terje Aasland was appointed Minister of Petroleum and Energy for the Labour Party in Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre’s government in March 2022. In January 2024, the ministry changed its name to Ministry of Energy and Terje Aasland became Minister of Energy.

Terje Aasland was born in 1965 and grew up in Skien, Norway.

He has been elected to the Parliament for the Labour Party from Telemark County since 2005 where he has been member and leader of the parliament’s Standing Committee on Energy and the Environment and the parliament’s Standing Committee on Business and Industry.

Aasland is a certified powerline worker (1986) and worked in several power companies in the Telemark region before being elected to the Norwegian parliament in 2005.

His political background includes positions as a city council member in Skien for the Labour Party, leader of the Labour Party in Telemark and central board member of the Labour Party since 2011.

Photo credit: Agnete Brun

As the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, Dr Fatih Birol (@fbirol) has moved the Agency to the forefront of global efforts to ensure secure, affordable and sustainable energy systems. He has broadened the IEA’s energy security work beyond oil to other key areas, particularly to electricity and critical minerals; made the IEA the global hub for clean and advanced energy technologies; and “opened the doors” of the IEA to major emerging economies including Brazil, China and India. Dr Birol chairs the World Economic Forum’s Energy Advisory Board and has been named in TIME's list of the world's most influential people.

Anders Opedal has been the President and CEO of Equinor since November 2020.

Opedal joined Equinor in 1997, and has held senior leadership positions since 2007, including heading up Equinor’s project and procurement organization and been country manager in Brazil. , Anders Opedal has presented ambitions for Equinor to reach net zero by 2050. Optimising oil and gas, accelerating renewables and building low carbon value chains are the pillars of the strategy.

Opedal holds a master's degree in engineering from The Norwegian University of Technology (NTNU) and an MBA from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

Dr Carole Nakhle is an internationally recognised energy economist and Founder & CEO of multi-award winning Crystol Energy, known for its independent expertise on global energy markets, policy, and geopolitics and a proud member of the International Energy Forum’s Industry Advisory Council.

With nearly 30 years of experience, she has worked with governments, major energy companies including Eni and Equinor, and international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. She has also advised key organisations including the OECD and COP28.

She serves as Secretary General of the Arab Energy Club, Board Member at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, and Lead Energy Expert at Geopolitical Intelligence Services. She is also a prolific author and media commentator. Her two books - Petroleum Taxation: Sharing the Wealth and Out of the Energy Labyrinth (co-authored with Lord Howell) - are widely cited references. She is regularly featured on leading networks. She has lectured at leading institutions including the University of Oxford, University of Surrey, and the Graduate Institute in Geneva.

A champion of inclusion, she founded Access for Women in Energy and has received multiple international honours, including Arab Women Entrepreneur, CEO of the Year UK, and Fellowship of the Energy Institute.

Robin Brooks is a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution. His research focuses on global growth and inflation dynamics, capital flows to emerging and frontier markets, as well as Western sanctions policy and the G7 oil price cap on Russia. He is frequently cited in popular media such as the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times among others. He appears regularly on CNBC and Bloomberg broadcasts.

Prior to Brookings, he was managing director and chief economist at the Institute of International Finance. In that role, he oversaw macroeconomic analysis and served as part of the senior management team. Prior to that, he was the chief FX strategist at Goldman Sachs based in New York, where he was responsible for the firm’s foreign exchange forecasts and publishing international macro research. Prior to Goldman Sachs, he was the FX strategist at Brevan Howard. Before joining the private sector, Brooks spent eight years as an economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where he worked on the IMF’s fair value models for FX, published academic research, and participated in missions to IMF program countries.

Brooks earned his doctoral degree in economics from Yale University in 1998. He earned a Bachelor of Science in monetary economics from the London School of Economics in 1993.

Erik Jones is Professor and Director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute and Nonresident Scholar at Carnegie Europe.

Professor Jones is author of The Politics of Economic and Monetary Union (2002), Economic Adjustment and Political Transformation in Small States (2008), Weary Policeman: American Power in an Age of Austerity (2012, with Dana H. Allin), and The Year the European Crisis Ended (2014). His forthcoming book is a Cambridge ‘element’ called From Club to Commons: Enlargement, Reform and Sustainability in European Integration (2025, with Veronica Anghel).

Professor Jones is editor or co-editor of more than thirty books and special issues of journals on topics related to European politics, political economy, and the transatlantic relationship, and he has been co-editor of Government & Opposition since 2015.

Professor Jones’ commentary has appeared in the Financial Times, The New York Times, and other major newspapers and magazines across Europe and North America.

Kjersti Haugland is Chief Economist at DNB Carnegie, the investment-banking arm of DNB, where she leads the macroeconomic team providing analysis and forecasts on global economic trends, interest rates, and exchange rates. Her team is consistently top-ranked in the Prospera Nordic Institutional Investor Surveys and, in 2025, received the award for the most accurate Norwegian forecasts. Before taking on the role of Chief Economist in 2017, Haugland held senior positions at Norges Bank’s Monetary Policy Department and at DNB Markets. She holds Master’s degrees in Economics from the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) and Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, and completed the Norwegian Defence University College’s Senior Executive Course in autumn 2024.

Sunniva Landmark Bjørnstad joined HitecVision in 2014 from DNB, where she worked as an analyst within the energy sector. Ms. Bjørnstad worked on the investment in Vår Energi from 2015 to 2020, including several large mergers and acquisitions leading up to the IPO of the company in 2022. Ms Bjørnstad is now working solely on the energy transition mandate, leading HitecVision’s investments in the offshore wind company Vårgrønn and the data centre company Skygard.

Ms. Bjørnstad holds an MSc in Industrial Engineering and Technology Management from the University of Stavanger, including a semester at UC Berkeley.

Gyri Reiersen co-founded Tanso, a Munich-based climate-tech company powering industrial manufacturers with carbon accounting, ESG-data management, and regulatory-compliance software. With a background in AI engineering and research at institutions including the Technical University of Munich and ETH Zürich, she has been active in the climate-tech domain for over a decade.

As a member of the Global Shapers Community of the World Economic Forum, she champions diversity in tech and climate-action innovation. She is also active in several European industry expert groups, advising on sustainable manufacturing and digitalization within the EU policy landscape. In 2025, she was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list in the “Manufacturing & Industry” category.

Photo: Tanso Technologies GmbH

Experience
2017–2025 – Member of Parliament, Socialist Left Party (SV)
Member and Deputy Chair of the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs.

2015–2017 – Secretary-General, Socialist Left Party (SV)
2012–2015 – Deputy Director, ZERO – Zero Emission Resource Organization
2011–2012 – Political Advisor, Oil and Gas, ZERO – Zero Emission Resource Organization
2008–2010 – Member of the National Executive Board, Young Friends of the Earth (Natur og Ungdom)

Education
Economics and Political Science, University of Oslo

Ola Svenneby is 28 years old and comes from Våler in Innlandet County. He was elected leader of the Norwegian Young Conservatives (Unge Høyre) in 2020, after serving as the 2nd Deputy Leader from 2018. In 2017, he won the Young Conservatives’ elite course. He was also the 5th candidate for Oslo Conservatives in the 2025 parliamentary election.

As leader of the Young Conservatives, Ola has made his mark on a number of political issues. He has been a particularly prominent voice in the immigration and integration debate and has been strongly engaged in discussions about the generational contract and what kind of society the next generation of politicians will inherit. Together with the Young Conservatives, he was also among the first to call for Norway to provide weapons to Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Photo credit: Unge Høyre

Parliamentary terms
Substitute Member of Parliament no. 3 for Akershus, 2013–2017, Labour Party
Substitute Member of Parliament no. 1 for Akershus, 2017–2021, Labour Party
Member of Parliament no. 17 for Akershus, 2021–2025, Labour Party
Member of Parliament no. 16 for Akershus, 2025–2029, Labour Party

Storting committees
2021–2025
Member, Standing Committee on Energy and the Environment, 19 October 2021–30 September 2025

Parliamentary delegations
2021–2025
Substitute member, Delegation to the EFTA and EEA Parliamentary Committees, 28 October 2021–30 September 2025

Membership of group steering committees
2025–2029
Member, Labour Party Group Steering Committee, 8 October 2025–30 September 2029

Appointments
Elected party positions
Chair, Workers’ Youth League until 2018

James Appathurai is Interim Managing Director for the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA). In this capacity, he leads DIANA and its mission to promote and support dual-use innovations that enhance the security of all Allied Nations. He was appointed to this position in July 2025. Prior to this role, Appathurai served as Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Innovation, Hybrid, and Cyber. From September 2021 to June 2025, he worked on policy development and implementation in the fields of Emerging and Disruptive Technologies, cyber security, energy security, the security implications of climate change, the protection of critical infrastructure, and hybrid defence.

He previously served as DASG for Political Affairs and Security Policy, as well as Special Representative to Central Asia and the Caucasus. He was NATO’s Spokesperson from 2004 to 2010. He served as Deputy Head and Senior Planning Officer in the Policy Planning and Speechwriting Section of NATO’s Political Affairs Division from 1998 to 2004. He served in the Canadian Defence Department from 1994 to 1998.

Rear admiral Berdal assumed command as Chief of the Royal Norwegian Navy in 2023. Prior to this he was Chief of the Norwegian Coast Guard, a position providing him with extensive experience within Artic challenges, working with governmental agencies and civilian-military interaction. He has spent the better part of his career as a submariner, both as a commanding officer on board, as commander of the Norwegian Submarine Service and as project manager for Norway’s new submarines at the Ministry of Defence.

Hans Vik has served as Chief of Police in the South-West Police District since 2016. He held the same position in the former Rogaland Police District from 2011 to 2015. Vik has also served as Deputy Chief of Police, Head of the Joint Operational Unit, and Head of the Joint Prosecution Unit.

In addition, he has held several positions as a police officer and police prosecutor. In 2007, Hans Vik was appointed Acting Public Prosecutor. He also has experience from the Armed Forces, the Oslo Police District, and the National Criminal Investigation Service (KRIPOS).

Hans Vik holds a law degree from the University of Bergen.

Knut Hauge (b. 1953) holds a Cand. Polit, degree in political science, Russian and history from the University of Oslo. After joining the Norwegian Foreign Service in 1980, he has mainly worked on issues related to security policy, Russian affairs and the High North. He has served at the embassy in Helsinki and at the Norwegian delegation to NATO, Brussels. He has been Consul General in Murmansk, Russia (1992-1994), Minister/DHM at the embassy in London (2001-2005), Ambassador to Poland (2005-2008), Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2008-2013) and Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Norway on the North Atlantic Council (NATO) (2014-2018). From 2018 until he retired in 2023 he served in the MFA as Director General and head of the Department for security policy.