Apply for your spot

JAN 30 2026 14.00 - LATE

Changing the world can get lonely. Let’s do it together.

When you’re building something disruptive, you need more than vision and hard work. You need people who open doors, share their skills, and help you turn ideas into change.

That’s the spirit The Changemaker Award was created to honor.

After last year’s premiere during Epicenter 10 year anniversary, we’re continuing the legacy of this award: shining a spotlight on the entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and community builders who are pushing Sweden forward through innovation and impact. 

This year, we’re once again curating a list of outstanding Swedish changemakers – founders, leaders, and innovators who are building the next generation of companies and solutions.

Join us at Epicenter Stockholm on January 30 to celebrate those who dare to challenge the status quo - and the community that backs them.

Apply for your spot

VOTING ENDED!

Following the release of Top 40 Nominees, we've now closed the voting of the Top 8 Finalists. 

VOTING PAGE HERE 

AGENDA.

13:15

DOORS OPEN

14:00

WELCOME & OFFICIAL OPENING

by Moderator Matilda Muhr Göransson, Head of Community at Epicenter.

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14:05

Meet our WHAT THE F***-EXPERT

Lilly Garrett, founder Maxia & Nordic Founders

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14:10

FIRED BY THE FUTURE - Leading with courage in times of disruption

With Anna Hummel-Gumaelius (Ericsson)

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14:30

WHO GETS TO BUILD THE FUTURE?

With Susanne Najafi

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14:50

FIRESIDE CHAT WITH LUKAS SAARI: Building while the ground is moving

Lukas Saari, CEO & Co-founder Tandem Health

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15:25

Why breaking the ice can change your world

With Elise Lilliehöök, CEO and founder Mingla

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15:30

BREAK.

15:50

PANEL: How it actually feels to build

With Ken Villum Klausen (Lunar), Sara Börsvik (Epidemic Sound) and Sebastian Hjärne (Talentium)

Moderator: Matilda Muhr Göransson (Epicenter)

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16:20

FIRESIDE CHAT WITH ARBA KOKALARI: From Brussels to the Board room

With Arba Kokalari (Member of the European Parliament)

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16:50

THE CHANGEMAKER AWARD CEREMONY


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17:00

CLOSING REMARK

by Matilda Muhr Göransson

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17:05

PRE-PARTY

@ the Terrace. 

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18:30

THE BIG CELEBRATION

NOTE: First come, first serve. Join us in Disruption Hall (Epicenter first floor) on time to secure your spot. 

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Ken Villum Klausen
Founder and CEO, Lunar

Ken Villum Klausen is founder and CEO of Lunar, a Nordic challenger bank with over 1 million users. Founded in 2015, Lunar is built on tech and has expanded across Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The company has raised more than €500 million from investors including Heartland, Tencent, and Seed Capital.In 2024, Lunar launched Moonrise, a standalone BaaS entity that extends Lunar’s banking infrastructure to international fintechs. Moonrise aims to break down barriers in the banking sector by enabling fintechs to enter the Nordics and innovate further.Before Lunar, Ken founded Wallmob, a mobile point of sale company acquired by Visma in 2014. He has been recognized in the Nordic startup ecosystem, including Founder of the Year at the Nordic Startup Awards in 2019 and a place on Berlingske’s Business Talent 100.Ken’s focus is clear, transparent banking experiences and scaling Lunar and Moonrise to meet changing market needs.

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Susanne Najafi
Swedish investor and serial entrepreneur

Susanne Najafi is a Swedish investor and serial entrepreneur. She has founded more than ten companies and carried out multiple exits. In 2016, Susanne founded the venture capital firm BackingMinds to increase diversity in the European startup scene by investing in the blind spots of Venture Capital. In addition to be ranked #1 at 40 under 40’s list of Sweden’s Top Tech Founders by DI and #1 of Sweden’s 100 most Inspiring Leaders, Susanne has been awarded Pioneer of the Year by His Royal Highness for her work to democratize venture capital.

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Sara Börsvik
CFO, Epidemic Sound

Sara Börsvik is Chief Financial Officer at Epidemic Sound. Sara joined in 2021 from Bonnierförlagen where she held roles as Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer. Sara is a member of the board at SF Studios, BIMobject, and G5 Entertainment, has previously held management positions at Rebtel and Tele2, and has been recognized as one of Sweden’s 125 most powerful women in business. Sara is a recognized industry leader, frequently sharing her experiences and advice at industry events like Sifted Talks and Breakit Funding Day.

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Arba Kokalari
Member of the European Parliament

Arba Kokalari is a Member of the European Parliament since 2019, serving in the committees on internal market, economic affairs, employment and gender equality. Her main priorities are digitalisation, tech and circular economy. Arba Kokalari has negotiated the Digital Services Act (DSA) and was lead negotiator for a report on the impact of AI on the financial sector. She currently monitors the AI Act implementation as part of the Parliament’s AI Act Working Group. Previously, she worked at Electrolux Group, in the telecom sector and at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

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Anna Hummel Gumaelius
Head of Global Leadership and Executive Development, Ericsson

Anna support organizations to future‑proof the capacity to lead. Her mission is simple and bold: “to secure that leaders do not get fired by the future.” She believes that finding your authentic leadership style is key—because when leaders lead as themselves, they make more courageous decisions, build healthier cultures, and navigate uncertainty with integrity. Guided by the motto “don’t be afraid of what you don’t know,” Anna invites executives to replace defensiveness with curiosity, and control with finding the comfort for un-comfort. She designs transformative experiences—coaching, labs, and real‑world challenges—that strengthen judgment, adaptability, and accountability, so leaders can thrive in the face of AI, geo-political shifts, and culture change. She believes that the core skill to develop to be future-fit is the ability to be fully comfortable in being really bad at things, or if you wish “to be competent at being incompetent, over and over again”. Anna always carries a chestnut in her pocket—a tactile reminder to stay grounded, and she heads to the nearest slide for a literal reset: a playful drop back into perspective before stepping forward into the emerging future.

Before joining Ericsson, Anna was the Nordic Lead for Leadership & Culture at Accenture, where she advised clients on these critical topics, and she has an academic background in organizational psychology and coaching, along with a Master of Science in Business Administration from the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg.

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Sebastian Hjärne
Founder & CEO, Talentium

Sebastian Hjärne is the founder and CEO of Talentium, an AI-driven hiring platform transforming how companies identify and recruit talent. A serial entrepreneur with multiple exits, he focuses on building scalable, human-centric technology to modernize recruitment and workforce decision-making.

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Lukas Saari
CEO & Co-founder, Tandem Health

Lukas has a habit of seeing the obvious long before others do. He led McKinsey’s Nordic AI and digitization practice by pushing health systems toward data-driven care years before it became the standard. Before that he worked on machine learning at Spotify. At Tandem he is placing the right bets again, whether it is hiring clinicians to shape the product or building the organization to scale fast.

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Lilly Garrett
Founder Maxia Marketing, Co-founder Nordic Founders

Lilly Garrett is the founder of Maxia, a product marketing consultancy helping early-stage software companies build foundations that actually support growth. She is also the founder of Nordic Founders, the fastest-growing founder community in the Nordics.

She has spent over a decade leading marketing in technology companies, often as the first marketing hire, and has led marketing through fundraising, mergers, acquisitions, and periods of rapid growth in companies that have reached billion-dollar valuations.

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Matilda Muhr Göransson
Head of Community, Epicenter Stockholm

MODERATOR.

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