Press release -
Strawbees is incredibly honoured to appoint Fabian Bengtsson and Carl Fhager, esteemed Board members to the Board of Directors
The Board of Directors of Strawbees AB is pleased to announce the appointment of two new esteemed Board members, Fabian Bengtsson and Carl Fhager, who officially joined the Board June 26th, 2019. Both esteemed Board members are highly respected in the Business community, and bring a wealth of experience in the following areas: entrepreneurship, strategy and innovation, law, business development, tech start-ups/scale-ups, government relations, policy development, angel investing and venture capital funding. Their expertise and guidance will be invaluable in driving Strawbees accelerating growth and tremendous success momentum in the years ahead.
‘I am incredibly honoured that both Fabian Bengtsson and Carl Fhager join the Board of Directors. They will support and advise us in what will become a very exciting future ahead of us, where Strawbees should be a standard product in all classrooms, as well as a great educational product in the retail market,’ states Erik Bergelin, CEO of Strawbees.
‘I am delighted to be part of Strawbees’ vision when it comes to hands-on and learning-by-doing education. I see a huge potential when it comes to combining products from the education and retail sector. Strawbees is filling the gap in relevant and fun education. I was one of the early investors in Strawbees back in 2017 and have since then watched them both grow and develop. I am proud to be part of Strawbees’ future success story as a new Board member going forward,’ comments Fabian Bengtsson, entrepreneur and new Board Member of Strawbees.
Strawbees also appoints Carl Heath, Special Counsel for the Protection of Democratic Dialogue and Vice President Professional Education at RISE, Anna Stenberg, founder of Wes Group (Executive Search) as well as Shams Jorjani, Chief Business Development Officer at Paradox Interactive, to Strawbees’ official advisory board. This stellar advisory board will advise the Strawbees Board of Directors in three key development areas for Strawbees going forward; Educational strategy and development, organizational development, as well as digital development.
‘Carl, Anna and Shams will be key resources for Strawbees going forward. Carl will be our speaking partner when it comes to educational development, Anna will help us build a world-class organisation, and Shams, with his extensive digital experience, will be our go-to person when it comes to platform building, our customer journey and digital development.’ says Strawbees CEO Erik Bergelin.
Notes to Editor:
Fabian Bengtsson is a Swedish entrepreneur with extensive experience in retail and digital commerce. Previous CEO of SIBA and chairman of NetOnNet AB, including as CEO 2001-2014, Chairman of NetOnNet AB 2012-2015 and member / Chairman of CE-Konsumentelektronikbranschen AB. Today Fabian Bengtsson is an active owner and chairman of the family´s investment company, Waldir AB, who owns the consumer electronic retailer; NetOnNet AB among others. He sits on the board of Företagarnas Riksstyrelse AB, Axfood AB, Svensk Fastighetsförmedling AB and several more. Image: Fabian Bengtsson, photo credit Sören Håkenlind
Carl Fhager is a partner at MAQS’ Gothenburg office and leads the practice group for Start-up companies. Considering Carl’s dual legal and managerial background, he is often asked to assist boards in an advisory manner or to join them as a member or a chairman. He also is a guest lecturer at Gothenburg University, lecturing on the topics of sports law, negotiations and agreements. Carl is also running one of the most well known business podcasts in Sweden called “Förhandlingspodden”. Image: Carl Fhager
Related links
Topics
- Design
Categories
- anna stenberg
- digital development
- entrepreneurship
- startups
- investment
- tech scale ups
- carl heath
- rise
- wes group
- shams jorjani
- paradox interactive
- fabian bengtsson
- venture capital
- board of directors
- board members
- strawbees
- advisory board
- educational strategy
- organizational development
Kicking off 2014
Strawbees, a Swedish Edtech company, was launched by an incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign back in 2014 - the people have spoken and the educator community was waiting for a product like this to come along.
Brand mission
Since then Strawbees transformed into a fast pace company delivering inspiring educational tools called the 21st Century Classroom Experiences. Their mission is simple: 'We want to inspire children to think creatively and out-of-the-box when it comes to visualizing and realizing ideas - think the next generation of creative problem solvers. We want a classroom of 30 pupils to come up with their very own unique solutions. Not to memorize things, but to actually understand and draw conclusions on their own actions, especially in a world of 'fake news' it is a key skill to be critical, question and go back to the source. Read something, test something, make something', says Erik Thorstensson, the inventor behind Strawbees.
The story
The initial idea started when Erik Thorstensson bought a lampshade from IKEA, the Swedish flat-pack furniture company. At that time he studied mechanical engineering and environmental sciences. He realized the production tools used for this lampshade generated a big amount of waste not utilized. Erik T. got to work and started to build different prototypes with this plastic waste and commissioned the very same factory to run a production utilizing IKEA's waste material. The result was Strawbees’ very first upcycled product!
Schools and UNIS
Strawbees appeared on the market at a time when schools were in a strong need for a big change, think about it. In a world where our cars have changed, our phones have changed and our payment systems have changed - why would our schools not change too? 'I like to think of our Strawbees’ education system like a 'Trojan Mouse' getting the foot in the door, our product is easy enough for pupils to build their confidence and not get frustrated but the possibilities are infinite and exactly that is the beauty of it!’ says Erik T. Any teacher anywhere in the world can use it as a base for student-driven learning. So much so that Strawbees has linked up with the UNIS (United Nations International School) having designed prototype kits and since then have run successful workshops in Ghana and Colombia years later.
Strawbees Educational System
Strawbees education system consists of affordable school kits, which cater to 30 pupils. This contains materials for construction, open-ended challenges in lesson plans, video tutorials, tools for programming (to build robots!) and most of all encourage experimentation - making by hand, learning by doing, trial and error on and offline. “The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge." Seymour Papert. The ultimate goal is to help foster students of all ages develop problem-solving skills for the demands and rise of technology of the 21st century. “In a society characterized by uncertainty and rapid change, the ability to think creatively is becoming the key to success and satisfaction, both professionally and personally. For today’s children, nothing is more important than learning to think creatively – learning to come up with innovative solutions to unexpected situations that will continually arise in their lives.” - Mitch Resnick, MIT Media Lab.
Community
Strawbees won't stop there. They work with a growing number of educators around the world, putting new lesson plans together, creating video tutorials and running workshops worldwide to expand their offer to create fun, creative and out-of-the-box learning tools for teachers, parents, and makers.
“The Strawbees solution empowers students to unleash creativity and an intuitive and fun approach to programming that works for all ages.”- Paola Mattioli, STEM educator, Rome, Italy
Accolades
Over the years Strawbees has collaborated and run workshops with the top in the industry including Spotify, Universeum in Sweden, Exploratorium in San Francisco, MIT Media Lab in Boston and Sweden’s National Museum of Science and Technology and many more exciting projects in the pipeline. Strawbees is stocked in over 50 countries and collaborates with over 40,000 schools globally. Erik Bergelin, Co-Founder, CEO and the driving force behind several successful fundraising rounds says: ‘Strawbees is a growth company, the demand is there, now we just need to deliver. With a newly elected top advisory board, exciting products in the pipeline and a clear focus on the education sector, Strawbees has huge potential to be a globally respected education product.’
Strawbees has won many awards, including the Year of the Maker 2014, Nordic EdTech Awards 2018 and just been nominated for the Norrsken Impact Award 2019.
Inspiring the next generation of inventors - join Strawbees' classroom!
