Senior Communications Advisor
Has an academic background in rhetoric, specialising in campaign analysis, speechwriting and political discourse.
Understanding exactly how language changes minds and behaviour, is what Anne Katrine is interested in. Most of her professional experience is from the fields of migration, human rights and public safety – designing strategies, writing/recording/editing content and leading projects.
I’m a Dane with an Aussie-English accent. A permanent souvenir I’ve taken with me from childhood.
The smell of sweltering hot asphalt, the constant background noise of buzzing cicadas interrupted by screeching lorikeets, driving days at a time just to cross into another state, the horror of discovering a cockroach in a shoe, bolting across the beach to avoid burning my feet on the sand. These are core memories from the suburbs of Sydney.
Born in rainy, windy Copenhagen but raised in Sydney. Soaking in as much sun, sea and multiculturalism as I could before being reintroduced to Denmark as a teenager, this time in a rural town with barely 600 residents, on the west coast of Jylland, where all my extended family is from.
Being a migrant from the age of 6, who got to move back to my home country, I gained a lifelong skill. The ability to see my culture from the outside. Probably part of the reason I wanted to be an observational stand-up comedian growing up. I learned which weird and quirky traits were associated with both of my home-countries and found a well of satirical potential in the process. But I also learned how much community and shared culture sincerely matters to our universal need to belong. Not just within a monoculture, but even more so in the mix of many cultures. I experienced this, not only when my parents were co-organising most Danish cultural activities in Sydney and a multitude of other migrant groups and Australians had fun joining in. In fact, it was mostly from going to public school with kids that weren’t Nordic, European or white, that I learned about the power of pluralism. That cultures can coexist and can make you appreciate how different and strikingly similar your culture is to everyone else’s.
Diwali, Chinese New Year, Ramadan were celebrated in my primary school and more familiar to me than Midsummer or Walpurgis. Moving back to Denmark was as much of a culture-shock as moving to Australia had been. After a couple of years in the Ringkøbing-Skjern region, I spent about 15 years studying and starting my career in Copenhagen. Living in Nørrebro was as close as I could come to finding the same diversity as I had grown up with and felt at home in.
During my studies, I’ve been lucky enough to travel widely and live in other countries, gaining friends and stories from all over the world. From a congressional fellowship in Washington DC, to conflict resolution workshops in Lebanon and Armenia, human rights conferences in Warsaw, Berlin, I’ve been continuously motivated by understanding what separates and divides a society, what belonging means to different groups and what home means, especially to the people who move.
What I value most about being Danish and Nordic hasn’t been revealed through any reports or data. It’s come from seeing my culture from the outside, working with neighbor-countries, being challenged by colleagues and friends who didn’t grow up where I did.
