Fjord management team

Mike Beeston

Chairman

Mike worked for six years at Saatchi and Saatchi where he was a Media Group Director before co-founding CHBi in 1994, one of the first web design companies. In 1998, CHBi was acquired by Razorfish for whom Mike was UK Managing Director. He led Razorfish for three successful years during which time it became the leading UK web design agency with more than 300 people. In early 2001 he left to help set up Fjord.

Olof Schybergson

Founder and CEO

Olof has years of experience collaborating with major clients across the US and Europe to develop innovative services and user experiences across various digital platforms. Previously he was creative director at Razorfish London. He holds an MA in Information and Graphic Design from De Montfort University. He takes a lead role in some of Fjord's most important projects, driving creativity and quality, to ensure solutions achieve Fjord's world class innovation standards.

Olof's LinkedIn profile

Andrew Falcon

COO

Prior to Fjord, Andrew held the same position at iTouch plc, a mobile phone content company, helping build it to a UK Listed multinational operating in 23 countries with a turnover of over £120m. Prior to iTouch, he worked in investment banking and global gold mining. He is currently a non-executive investor director of two young mobile technology companies. He holds a bachelor of commerce degree from the University of Witwatersrand and a bachelor of law degree from the University of Natal.

Henry Fairpo

CFO

Earning a place amongst Business XL magazine’s top 50 power brokers along the way, Henry has been advising digital businesses since the early 1990s. Prior to joining Fjord, he was Group CFO for a business that powers mobile internet and content services around the world. Having been Group Finance Director at a public company, Henry also spent several years as a Corporate Finance Partner and head of TMT at a top 10 accounting firm. A Chartered Accountant and Qualified Corporate Financier, Henry has written books on strategy in the technology sector and been ranked in the top 50 movers and shakers in the UK growth company sector.

Christian Lindholm

Chief Innovation Officer (CIO)

Christian has 10 years design management experience from Nokia. Following his Nokia role he worked at Yahoo as Vice President of Global Mobile Products, overseeing the development of Yahoo's mobile services. He drove the creation of several mobile services at Yahoo, including the award-winning Yahoo Go 2.0. Christian is also the creator of Lifeblog, and a recognised industry innovator. He is a frequent conference speaker. His extensive experience and know-how allows him to ensure solutions meet the needs of the mass market, are scalable for the future and are rich in innovation.

Mark Curtis

Chief Client Officer (CCO)

A founder of Fjord, Mark is now Chief Client Officer (CCO). Previously, Mark was co-founder and CEO of Handmade Mobile, the company behind Flirtomatic, whose mission is to reinvent dating as entertainment for the mobile generation. In 2005 he wrote “Distraction – Being Human in the Digital Age” (Futuretext) about the effects and direction of digital media on society. He previously co-founded CHBi, which became Razorfish London in 1998 and has been working in digital media since 1993. His background before this was marketing.

Iñaki Amate

Director, New Business

Iñaki started his career developing digital products and services in Finland in 1999 working for clients like Nokia and Vodafone. He worked as a project manager, consultant and account manager for Satama and Morning, pioneering the design of some of their first mobile concepts. He has a BA in business and a MSc in economics and an MBA from the Helsinki School of Economics. Iñaki joined Fjord in September 2004 as Managing Director of the Finnish office.

Louisa Heinrich

Director, Strategy

Before joining Fjord, Louisa had been working in the digital user experience design space for over 13 years, across sectors from financial to government to consumer goods; across b2b, b2c, commercial and not-for-profit; on both the client and the agency side. Now that technology has advanced to the point where the question has moved from 'what can this do?' to 'what should we do with it?', Louisa spends most of her time helping businesses small and large find more innovative and engaging means of accomplishing their goals and relating to their customers through the creative application of well-designed technology.

Laura Hill

Director, Marketing

Laura started her career at Capital Radio in London and worked in various roles in radio spanning 8.5 years where she worked her way up to run trade marketing, research and business development for Chrysalis Radio. She then worked for Microsoft Advertising for 2 years where she was responsible for launching advertising products across EMEA. She then moved to Turner Broadcasting, running the trade marketing department in the UK for all their brands and the consumer marketing for movie channel TCM and digital only content brand Adult Swim.

Nancy Birkhölzer

Director, Service Design Academy

Nancy holds an MA in Information and Interface Design and has more than 10 years of experience in service design. She worked for 4 years as a User Experience Manager for Vodafone Global on the strategy, conception, design and specification of mobile services across mobile platforms. She led global innovation projects with Vodafone’s operating companies and managed user research projects across European markets. After her Vodafone role Nancy joined Yahoo! Mobile where she held a key role in the team that developed Yahoo! Go.

Andy Goodman

Managing Director, Fjord Madrid

Andy has worked on a succession of groundbreaking products and services. The earliest mark he made was the creation of the first iTV service in the UK as the Head of Design at Sky Interactive. After a couple of stints in the games industry Andy then focused on mobile, working for companies such as Vodafone, Orange, O2 and Nokia. As an early member of Seren, Andy was one of the pioneers of the Service Design industry, going beyond the interface to create service experiences, an area Fjord is now a leader in.

Anna Kraft

Managing Director, Fjord Berlin

Anna holds an M.SC. in Cognitive Science with a major in Interaction Design. Anna worked for 4 years for Razorfish AB (later Creuna AB) as an Information Designer, Experience Lead, and Group Lead. She then spent 3 years at Vodafone Global as User Experience Manager, working on specification, implementation, strategy and concept development for Vodafone’s User Experience roadmap. Before joining Fjord, Anna spent a year at Samsung Design Europe as a User Research Manager, evaluating and researching European trends for Samsung HQ.

Scott Ewings

Managing Director, Fjord London

Scott has a strong background in Creative Direction, Graphic Design and User Experience and has an excellent track record in designing customer experience propositions to drive business outcomes. Scott joined Fjord from Amdocs where he was Consulting Director. Prior to Amdocs, he spent two years in Sydney as GM Strategy & Planning for Vodafone. Before joining Vodafone Scott founded, developed and managed a number of boutique user experience consulting and development agencies.

Prashant Agarwal

Managing Director, Fjord New York

Prashant opened the Fjord New York office, prior to this he was Fjord’s Director of Product Strategy, where he helped clients develop a range of digital services from global mobile portals to social music services. Before Fjord, he was interim VP of Product at Refresh Mobile, an Accel Partners-backed startup. Prior to Refresh Mobile, he held a number of senior positions with Yahoo!. Previous experience also includes roles with Dow Jones, CNET and Beyond.com as well as launching Techdirt Wireless - a popular daily wireless industry news blog - and co-founding the early mobile multimedia innovator Stick Networks.

Olli Mannerkoski

Managing Director, Fjord Nordics

Olli is a seasoned design leader and practitioner bringing multi-dimensional experience of the digital business to the advantage of Fjord clients. In over 12 years as consultant and entrepreneur, Olli has delivered service design and user experience design projects for clients in several countries catering to a variety of industries and niche user markets. His clients have included global majors such as Polymer Vision, Huawei, Siemens Mobile, Elcoteq, Hewlett-Packard, Turkcell, Metso Automation, TeliaSonera, Ixonos, Nokia Siemens Networks and Nokia. In his previous career as an academic, Olli anchored the education and research initiatives for user-centred design, user interface design and multimedia as a professor of media technology at the University of Lapland, Faculty of Art and Design.