Autumn Conference 2024 — speakers’ CVs

Jonas Gahr Støre

Prime Minister of Norway

Jonas Gahr Støre was born on 25 August 1960. Mr Støre underwent naval officer training at the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy in Bergen in 1979–1981. He then studied for a degree in political science, specialising in history and social economics, at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris in France from 1981 to 1985.

Jonas Gahr Støre was Minister of Foreign Affairs in Jens Stoltenberg’s second government from 2005 to 2012, and then Minister of Health and Care Services until the change of government in 2013. Before that, he was State Secretary and Chief of Staff at the Office of the Prime Minister in 2000–2001.

Mr Støre became Leader of the Labour Party in 2014 and has been a member of the Storting for Oslo since 2009. He has served on the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs, the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, and the Enlarged Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence.

Jonas Gahr Støre became Prime Minister on 14 October 2021.

Dr Fatih Birol

Executive Director, International Energy Agency

Dr Fatih Birol (@fbirol) has served as Executive Director of the International Energy Agency since 2015. Under his leadership, the IEA has moved to the forefront of global efforts to safeguard energy security while combatting climate change and managing the social and economic impacts of clean energy transitions. After taking office, Dr Birol led the IEA in its first ever modernisation programme, focussing on “opening the doors” of the IEA to major emerging economies; making the IEA the global hub for clean energy transitions; and broadening the IEA’s energy security focus beyond oil. He has been named in the TIME100, TIME's annual list of the world's most influential people, and by Forbes as one of the most influential people in the world of energy. He chairs the World Economic Forum’s (Davos) Energy Advisory Board and is an honorary life member of Galatasaray Football Club.

Anders Opedal

President and Chief Executive Officer, Equinor

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.

Driven by the company’s purpose to turn natural resources into energy for people and progress for society, Anders Opedal has presented ambitions for Equinor to reach net zero by 2050. Optimizing 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.

Terje Aasland

Norwegian Minister of Energy

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

Jeff Currie

Chief Strategy Officer of Energy Pathways, Carlyle

Jeff Currie is Chief Strategy Officer of Energy Pathways at Carlyle. He is based in London.

Mr. Currie focuses on conducting analysis of commodity market trends and the evaluation of new investment opportunities across energy markets and the commodity supply chain central to the energy transition.

Mr. Currie is the former Global Head of Commodities Research at Goldman Sachs, where he helped to build their commodities business. During his nearly three decades at the firm, he became one of the leading commodity market strategists on Wall Street, known for advising clients through the commodity “super cycle” of the 2000s, the shale supply shock of the 2010s, and most recently the twin shocks of the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war.

Mr. Currie is a graduate of Pepperdine University and holds a Master of Arts Economics and a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Irene Rummelhoff

Executive vice president, Equinor

Irene Rummelhoff has since 2018 served as EVP of Marketing, Midstream and Processing (MMP) at Equinor ASA and has been a member of the CEC since 2015. With more than 3600 employees worldwide, she has the responsibility for flow assurance, processing, and marketing of all Equinor’s products, including marketing of the Norwegian State’s natural gas and crude on the Norwegian continental shelf. This responsibility includes development of the company’s hydrogen and CCS value chains.

Between 2015 and 2018 she served as the EVP for Equinor’s New Energy Solutions. In that context she was instrumental in Equinor’s market-leading transition into the renewable energy field, ahead of all the other oil majors. She was tasked with forming a new division and driving the development of the Equinor’s strategy in renewable and alternative energy solutions, whereby she pushed for offshore wind and low carbon solutions such as carbon capture and storage and other related technologies, including hydrogen development.

From 2014 to 2022 Ms. Rummelhoff was a member and later Deputy Chair (2016) of the Board of Directors of Norsk Hydro, and as of March 2022 she is a member of the Board of Directors of Airbus.

Kjerstin Braathen

Chief Executive Officer (CEO), DNB

CEO since 2019.

Other DNB experience: Group CFO, Group Executive Vice President of Business Banking Norway, and many years of experience in Shipping, Offshore and Logistics (SOL) in Oslo. Joined DNB in 1999.

Other experience: Experience from Hydro Agri International.

Education: Master of Management from École Supérieure de Commerce de Nice Sophia Antipolis.

Trainee and chartering mgr – Norsk Hydro ASA (1995-1999)
SOL serval positions (1999-2013)
Group EVP Coporate Banking/ Biz banking (2013-2017)
CFO (2017 –2019)
CEO (2019 to present)

Stephanie Kelly

Head of Greenwheel

Stephanie joined Redwheel in 2022. As Head of Greenwheel she leads the sustainability ecosystem that powers Redwheel’s Enhanced Integration, Transition and Sustainable funds.

She began her career within the investment industry in 2014 and prior to joining Redwheel, Stephanie was the Deputy Head of the abrdn Research Institute, where she led on macro ESG and political risk research.

She holds a BA(Hons) in Economics and Politics and an MSc in International Relations from Trinity College Dublin.

Ben van Beurden

Former CEO of Shell, now senior adviser Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co

Ben van Beurden was Chief Executive Officer of Shell plc (2014-2022). He joined the company in 1983, after graduating with a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands. His career spans both Downstream and Upstream activities and he has held a number of operational and commercial roles, including some ten years in the LNG business. He became Vice President Manufacturing Excellence (2005, based in Houston), in which role he was responsible for standards in operational excellence and high-performance initiatives in refining and chemicals manufacturing. He was appointed Executive Vice President Chemicals (2006, based in London). During his tenure in the role, Mr Van Beurden was appointed to the boards of a number of leading industry associations including the International Council of Chemicals Associations and the European Chemical Industry Council. He became Downstream Director and a member of the Executive Committee (2013), with regional responsibility for Europe and Turkey. Mr Van Beurden has joined the Supervisory Board of Mercedes-Benz AG per April 2021. Per January 2024 he is also Senior Advisor to KKR with a special focus on Climate Investments.

Dr. Constanze Stelzenmüller

Director of the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings

Dr. Constanze Stelzenmüller is the Director of the Center on the United States and Europe and the inaugural holder of the Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and trans-Atlantic Relations at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC.

A German native herself, she is an expert on German, European, and trans-Atlantic foreign and security policy, as well as international law and human rights. From 2019-2020, Dr. Stelzenmüller held the Kissinger Chair on Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress and from 2014-2019 served as the inaugural Robert Bosch Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Prior to joining Brookings, she directed the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and later served as Senior Transatlantic Fellow with the organization, heading the Transatlantic Trends Program. Dr. Stelzenmüller’s work in the think tank sphere follows a distinguished career in journalism, including the role of Defense and International Security Editor in the political section of DIE ZEIT from 1994-2005. She has contributed to a variety of publications, writes a monthly column for the Financial Times, and is a frequent commentator on American and European news outlets.

Photo credit: Marc Darchinger