Helena Lindemark is Founder & CEO of Sustainable Development Sweden AB and Founder & Chairperson of the 2022 Initiative Foundation. Her focus on sustainable development started in 1991 as Programme Officer and head of the United Nations Capital Development Fund’s office in Bolivia. She has also worked at FAO, the EU, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida, former SIDA) and within both private companies and Civil Society Organisations (CSO) for several years.
Helena has a talent for seeing the big picture and for turning problems into opportunities. She has extensive experience as speaker, trainer, coach and workshop facilitator in relation to sustainable development. Participants have mainly been leaders and specialists from ministries, authorities and private organisations from Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. She has also been involved in several projects, programmes and plans as expert on Impact Assessment (IA) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA).
During the last few years her focus has primarily been on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda with a holistic perspective, based on the need to focus on environmental and climate issues for the survival of future generations on Planet Earth. As representative of Globetree, a CSO accredited to both UN Environment and UN ECOSOC, she is also engaged in UN meetings and consultations since September 2019.
Sustainable Development Sweden AB was formed with the purpose to accelerate sustainable development in Sweden and internationally, based on the fact that Sweden is often seen as a role model within sustainability. To match the purpose, Helena initiated the potentially global project “the 2022 Initiative” in 2014, and founded the non-profit 2022 Initiative Foundation in 2017. The foundation is today a member of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and was launched internationally during the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2020. To a large extent thanks to Helena’s efforts in relation to the 2022 Initiative, the Swedish Government has proposed a UN Conference in Stockholm in 2022, 50 years after the first UN Conference on Sustainable Development was held in Stockholm in 1972. 2022 is also halfway to 2030 since the agreements on the 2030 Agenda and the climate in 2015. An important part of the idea behind the 2022 Initiative is to accelerate sustainability by adding milestones to the 2030 Agenda, to facilitate action from today’s leaders on the long-term SDGs.
Within Sustainable Development Sweden, Helena is also involved in the development of a digital tool, simplifying the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda, based on a holistic perspective, and facilitating a process for Impact Assessment, development of sustainability strategies, plans and actions to reach the SDGs.
Helena Lindemark has a degree of M.Sc. in international Business Administration and Economics, complemented with Environmental Economics. Swedish is her mother tongue and she is fluent in English and Spanish.
