The Academy has appointed Eva Pettersson new Secretary General/Managing Director

The Secretary General/Managing Director of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry, Carl-Anders Helander, will retire this summer. The Board of Directors (the Collegium) has appointed Eva Pettersson, Rosersberg, new Secretary General/Managing Director, which the Academy in pleno confirmed at its assembly on 9 March. Eva Pettersson takes up the post on 1 July.

Eva Pettersson was Chief Executive of JTI, the Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Engineering, from 2011 to February 2013. In March 2013, she left JTI to work full time with the company Naturskog AB, which she and her husband founded in 2008. The company, which employs about 30–35 people, has been appointed the green industries’ state-of-the-art company of the year and has also been one of the newspaper DI's gazelle companies for three consecutive years (a gazelle company is a small, rapidly growing, company).

Before serving as CEO at JTI Eva Pettersson worked for many years in several positions at the Foundation for Agricultural Research and LRF, the Federation of Swedish Farmers – mainly as research director for over six years. Eva Pettersson is a biologist from Linköping University and the University of Oregon, but earned her PhD in plant breeding at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences with her doctoral thesis "Anther Culture of Potato”. With her combined research and business background she has held numerous assignments as member and expert in various reference groups for natural resources, landscape and agricultural science issues, etc. She has also been a board member, and in several cases, the Chairman of the Board in organizations in the field of research and green industries.

Eva Pettersson was elected Fellow of the Academy’s General Section in 2007. She has served as the secretary and as chair of the Academy's Research Policy Committee and is now part of the Academy's nominating committee.

“During my time as a committed fellow of KSLA I have learned to appreciate the Academy and to see the great value of a neutral platform for dialogue, analysis and possible influence. In my view KSLA a very important organization and it is with pride that I shoulder the position as the Secretary General/Managing Director of the Academy”, Eva Pettersson comments.

Eva Pettersson takes over as Secretary General and Managing Director on 1 July, 2017.

More information

The Vice President of the Academy, Björn Sundell
Tel +46 70 516 05 75
sundell.bjorn@gmail.com

Eva Pettersson
eva@naturskog.se