Åsa Ström Hildestrand

Åsa Ström Hildestrand has a Master in political science and development cooperation from Uppsala University. She has 20+ years of work experience from positions in several Swedish ministries, international NGOs, and Nordic collaboration. Areas of expertise include sustainable development governance, communications, regional policy, labour market integration of immigrants, women’s economic empowerment, project management, and international cooperation.

Åsa manages several projects related to sustainable development, including Nordic cooperation for Agenda 2030 at the local level and Nordic Programme for Sustainable Living.

Academic qualifications
MSc in Political Science, Uppsala University, Sweden

Languages
Swedish
English
German

Prior positions

Head of Communications at Nordregio. Responsible for the outreach part of Nordregio’s mission: to make sure we reach our stakeholders and present policy relevant research in user-friendly formats. In practice this entailed building a pro-active team that developed new formats for Nordregio’s website, digital channels, publications, webinars, and conferences for Nordic knowledge exchange. Another important part of the role was to maintain and build new relations with practitioners’ networks across the Nordics and contribute to their work.

Consultant focusing on women’s economic empowerment and local development in Jordan for the Embassy of Sweden in Amman, the Arab Women Enterprise Fund., and the Business and Professional Women’s Association, Amman.

Swedish Ministry for Enterprise, Energy and Communications, responsible for mainstreaming gender and integration perspectives in the development and implementation of the national policy for sustainable regional growth. Also coordinating the Nordic collaboration on regional policy.

The Government’s Commission on the Future of Sweden, project manager, analysing the outlook and challenges for Swedish municipalities and regions towards 2020 and 2050.

Swedish Ministry for the Environment, deputy project manager for an international conference on sustainable development (Stockholm+40) in the run up to the Rio+20 Summit.

Swedish Government Offices’ Information Department, Head of the editorial team of the government’s website, www.regeringen.se, also managing various communication projects.

The United Nations Population Fund, New York, coordinating UNFPA’s participation in the global Women Deliver Conference (promoting maternal health and empowerment of girls and women world wide).

Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Sweden, Desk Officer responsible for Sweden’s official relations with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal focusing on development cooperation, corruption, human rights, gender issues etc.

The Swedish Integration Agency, Project Coordinator of the flagship report “State of the Integration process in Sweden” (Rapport integration), including communications and launching activities.

Consulate General of Sweden, Los Angeles, responsible for promoting Sweden and Swedish technology, design, arts and films in California.