Join us to discuss the future workforce - from skill-based hiring and inclusive leadership to the rise of the superworker: versatile, high-impact talent changing how we define performance in 2025 and beyond.
💥 Epicenter/Elements member? Check the app to claim your free ticket.
At VERGE, we stand at the tipping point of what’s next. Designed for those who dare to explore, challenge, and redefine the future, this is where business, technology, and innovation collide.To be on the verge of something is not easy to describe, it's a feeling. And you have to be in the room to fully grasp it.
See you at Epicenter.
11.30-12.30
Before Talent Smash kicks off, we’re gathering a select group of founders and people leaders from fast-growing companies and large corporates for an exclusive, off-the-record lunch. This is your opportunity to discuss current blockers, hard-earned lessons, and shared insights.
What's next for HR? - With Anna Carlsson
From duct tape to IPO - With Victoria Kopylov and Anna Fredrixon
SOLD OUT
with Adrian McDonald (Epicenter) and Henrik Järleskog (Sodexo)
with Max Thormé (Talandary)
with Sebastian Thunman (Strawberry)
Balancing performance, leadership and culture in times of rapid change. With Maria Waddington (Epidemic Sound)
with Ingrid Clementson (HR Legal)
with Kajsa Asplund (Alva Labs)
with Anna Carlsson (HR Digi)
If so - what does that mean for diversity and inclusion?
With Clara Humla (Ingrid Capacity), Åsa Johansson (Women in Tech), Beda Grahn (Kyndryl) and Matilda Muhr Göransson (Moderator)
Sara Dalsfelt is the CMO at Adway, turning scrolls into hires and employer brands into magnets. With a background in recruitment marketing and a serious love for social-first thinking, she’s helped hundreds of companies ditch the spray-and-pray job ads and start attracting quality talent - faster.
"At Adway, we don’t just advertise jobs, we automate smart, social-first recruiting. Our Social Recruiting Technology targets untapped talent on the world’s biggest social networks, serves them frictionless mobile apply flows, and syncs quality candidates straight into your ATS. Fully automated. Fully measurable. Fully built for quality of hire. Because today’s best candidates? They’re also today’s savviest consumers. And we know how to win their attention."
Katarina Hägg is a seasoned executive leader with over 20 years of experience spanning education, business, and strategic communications.
She is currently the CEO of SSE Executive Education, where she fosters growth, profitability, and societal impact by leveraging her extensive expertise in global partnerships and the arts and humanities. Previously, she served as VP of International Affairs and External Relations at SSE, and before that, she held several leadership roles in both academia and business. Katarina holds an MSc in International Business Administration, has lived and worked in Germany, Finland, France, and the UK, and holds advisory and board positions in several international organizations.
Beda Grahn is Managing Director and Vice President of Kyndryl Nordics and Baltics. Kyndryl’s mission in the Nordics and Baltics is to help our customers to modernize and manage their mission-critical systems by leveraging emerging technologies that drive innovation and accelerate business transformation.
She has previously held leadership roles within sales and marketing at companies such as Microsoft, F5, Canal Digital, among others. Beda is a changemaker. Her skills and expertise are in transformation, leadership, sales, turnarounds, startups, and intrapreneurship. Beda has a strong track record of building high-performing teams and creating a sound, upbeat, inclusive, diverse and healthy work environment, particularly during transformation, turnaround, and build-up phases.
Henrik Järleskog isn’t your typical executive. With a background in global management consulting and Fortune 500 leadership roles, he has worked across boardrooms, AI transformation, and the future of work, all while raising two young children on his own and building his own AI agent team. He co-founded a humanitarian non-profit with zero budget that reached the World Economic Forum and National Geographic in under six months. Henrik is part of the Wallenberg Leadership talent pool, mentored by Tore Bertilsson, IKEA board member, and is an inbound member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences’ Business Executive Council. Today, as Head of Future of Work at Sodexo, the world’s 18th largest employer serving 90 million people every day, Henrik collaborates with Sodexo’s most strategic clients to shape the future of how we work. He doesn’t just talk about change... he lives it. Today, he will share why the most transformative shift we are seeing is not remote or hybrid. It is the rise of the superworker.
Duyen Jin Nguyen is Head of Sweden at Amby. She believes recruitment is more than just filling roles — it’s about creating the right match between people, purpose, and potential. With a background in hiring across tech, product, and commercial roles for fast-growing companies, she thrives where strategy meets people. Duyen is also passionate about using AI to simplify hiring and has been testing numerous of tools lately so you don't have to.Amby is an embedded recruitment partner that simplifies hiring for ambitious companies like Simployer, Kahoot!, Whereby, Superside, and reMarkable. With a full-stack, embedded model, Amby helps companies of all sizes scale their hiring with quality, pace, and flexibility — across roles, functions, and markets.
Clara Humla is AI Program Lead at Ingrid Capacity, where she leads the company’s strategic AI initiatives to drive innovation and operational excellence in grid-scale energy storage. With a background as a data engineer and experience from both startups and large organizations, Clara specializes in building data-driven solutions that turn complexity into business value. Alongside her technical work, Clara has actively contributed to diversity efforts - helping drive and organize networks for women developers and championing inclusive practices that strengthen both teams and results.
Ingrid Capacity operates over 200 MW/MWh of operational battery energy storage assets with their proprietary trading and optimization platform. In 2025, they have another 200 MW/MWh under construction and a total development pipeline exceeding 6 GW in battery energy storage.
A people and growth executive with deep operational experience, Anna was previously Head of People at KRY and has played key roles in scaling some of Sweden’s fastest-growing companies. She’s a trusted advisor to founders, boards, and VCs on organizational strategy, leadership, and sustainable scale.
A strategic legal and commercial advisor, Victoria has over 18 years of experience in business law, including senior roles at Spotify, KRY and Pocketlaw. She’s led teams across multiple markets, sat on executive leadership teams and in boards, and now runs ThinkAloud, a boutique advisory firm helping companies unlock growth with legal as a strategic lever.
Adrian is an experienced company builder with a passion for automation, data and tech.
He's been involved in developing new business models and emerging tech products in many countries - such as 𝙈𝙞𝙘𝙧𝙤𝙨𝙤𝙛𝙩 𝘼𝙙 𝙀𝙭𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚, 𝙒𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙨𝙥𝙖𝙘𝙚 (Europe's fastest growing tech company, 2014), 𝙍𝙚𝙨𝙪𝙡𝙩, 𝙀𝙥𝙞𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧 and 𝘼𝙙𝙬𝙖𝙮.
This allowed him to coach many Founders + CEO’s of some of the most exciting tech scaleups in the Nordics and also follow through with some tech investments from Stockholm to Silicon Valley.
As the CEO of Epicenter Group, he's now fully-focused on connecting innovation cities around the world, by empowering and bringing together the next-generation of leaders so, together, we can solve the world's largest problems with technology.
Anna Carlsson is an HR Tech analyst and strategist who helps organisations navigate transformation and build future-ready HR strategies. With a strong foundation in both technology and HR, she brings clarity to complex challenges and guides leaders in aligning people, data, and digital tools for long-term impact.
Max Thormé is a builder at heart. From coding video game bots at the age of 10 to launching ventures in his teens, he's always been obsessed with human potential and technology.
He’s a former Googler and award-winning leader who is now redefining how the world hires with Talendary — one of Europe’s most promising AI recruitment platforms.
Talendary's AI agents already empower recruiters to become the strategic people architects of tomorrow’s workforce. In this session, Max shows you what the future of recruitment looks like — and why it’s already here.
Åsa Johansen is the Director of Women in Tech Sweden – a non-profit organization with over 30,000 members and 50 corporate partners working to encourage more women to enter and remain in the tech industry. With a background in communications, PR, and events, Åsa has extensive experience in building bridges between business, tech, and society. She is passionate about inclusion, representation, and creating concrete pathways for women into the tech industry.
HR Legal was created in 2022 as a SaaS plattform to help companies within employment law matters. We empower companies to do (legally) right. Founder of HR Legal is Ingrid Clementson who has worked as an employment counsel since 2008 helping companies in strategic, hands-on HR Legal matters".
Kajsa Asplund is a licensed psychologist and PhD in Talent Management who blends cutting-edge research with practical solutions to transform how companies hire and develop talent. As Lead People Science at Alva Labs, she drives the creation of science-based, bias-aware recruitment tools that enable fairer, more accurate, and more human hiring decisions. Author of Talang för människor (Talent for People), Kajsa’s work bridges academic insight and business impact, helping organisations unlock the potential of both candidates and teams. A passionate advocate for evidence-based recruitment, she inspires audiences with a vision of a hiring process where every decision is both scientifically sound and deeply human.
Maria Waddington is Chief of People and Culture at Epidemic Sound and joined the company in 2019. Maria is experienced in maintaining culture, shaping employer branding and driving performance within fast-growing companies, and has a background in engineering. She previously held the role of Chief People and Culture Officer at the Swedish media company, Readly.
Epicenter's Head of Community Matilda Muhr Göransson will guide you through the day.
Elise Lilliehöök is the Co-founder and CEO of mingla.com, a platform designed to enhance professional networking and event experiences. With a strong background as an entrepreneur, angel and board executive, Elise has dedicated herself to creating innovative solutions that facilitate meaningful human connection.
Level up your networking. Connect to play.
HELSINKI / STOCKHOLM / OSLO
This is the place where people come together to share society changing thoughts. To co-create and make ideas leave the desk and become reality. A meeting arena where companies can collaborate, grow, and build new solutions – together.
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