André Nilsen, Chairman and CEO

Dr Nilsen has advised prominent organizations like 10 Downing Street, the European Parliament, A. P. Møller – Mærsk, and the former SKM Group.

As a scholar and advisor, he has worked at the highest level, engaging with the chairmen, CEOs, and senior executives of top global firms from a range of industries, including investment banking, insurance, tech, telecoms, media, aerospace, defence, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, engineering, automobile, transport, logistics, steel, construction, and energy, as well as with political leaders and senior civil servants at prime minister’s offices, finance, economy, and defence ministries, and the European institutions.

Dr Nilsen is carrying out a major advanced research program, combining philosophy, social science, strategy, and other fields. He is developing a model of the world and a new general approach to leadership. He is a College Lecturer and Tutor in Philosophy and Politics at Hertford College at the University of Oxford and also teaches at several other of the most prominent Oxford colleges as well as for Stanford University. For Oxford colleges, he teaches PPE students as well as visiting students from Harvard, Yale, MIT, Princeton, Columbia, and Renmin University of China. He is known as an exceptionally inspiring and effective tutor within Oxford’s world class system of bespoke one-to-one education. His research and teaching range from Wittgenstein over grand strategy to globalization and finance.

Previously, Dr Nilsen was for several years the acting Full Professor of International Business at the University of Münster, one of Germany’s most distinguished universities. There, he lectured extensively on Global Strategic Management, Globalization, The BRIC Economies, International Political Economy, Global Finance, Global Corporate Governance, Global Production Networks, Social Networks, Social Entrepreneurship, and Global Business, Government, and Society, including to Executive MBA students.

Dr Nilsen has numerous policy, media, and academic publications, and is now working on a major research book.

He has attended high level conferences by the University of Oxford, the Singularity University, the Wallenberg Foundation, the Alfred Herrhausen Society, the Ditchley Foundation, Wilton Park, the House of Commons, the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Commission, the OECD, the Geneva Center for Security Policy, the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, and Zürich University.

His research has been supported by large grants by highly prestigious bodies.

Dr Nilsen has a DPhil in political economy and an MPhil in European politics, law, and economics from Wadham College at the University of Oxford, where he was the 2000 Norway Scholar. For his Oxford degrees, he researched corporate finance, M&A, hostile takeovers, and technological innovation. As an undergraduate, he studied finance at Harvard University, politics at Heidelberg University, economics at the University of Washington, and philosophy at the University of Oslo. He has a Certificate in Leadership and Organization and is trained in the core approach of the Harvard Negotiation Project.

In the Norwegian Artillery Regiment, he was Corporal, Command Assistant, Battle Team Leader, and the Head Representative of all the soldiers.

Dr Nilsen speaks five languages, is learning five more, and has lived in six countries.