Barbro Ehnbom

The Swedish-American business woman Barbro Ehnbom has become renowned for her valuable networks and her successful business-generating activities. Through the female network Barbro’s Best & Brightest, the Female Economist of the Year award and within Life Science she is best known as the founder of SALSS, the Swedish-American Life Science Summit. 

 

Barbro, raised in Stockholm with four siblings, is the daughter of Bertil Ehnbom, Head of Department at the National Audit Office, and Astrid Grönstedt, Doctor of the Arts.

 

Barbro left her doctoral studies at The Economic Research Institute in 1969 and moved across the Atlantic to pursue her dreams of America (and Elvis). After an assignment at Columbia University, she came to work in various roles within the pharmaceutical industry and on Wall Street as a company manager and analyst. Throughout her professional career, she has actively worked to foster collaborations between Swedish and American businesses, not only in her profession as an investment banker, but also as a long-time board member of the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce. She continued her dedication to enhancing professional networks across the Atlantic by founding the Swedish American Life Science Summit (SALSS) in 2005, a by-invite-only Life Science Summit for Swedish- and American executives and scientists. 

 

Over the years, Barbro has also been passionate about supporting women in their professional careers, as she found herself to be the only woman in male-dominated board rooms. In 2001, Ehnbom took the initiative to create the Female Economist of the Year, a scholarship awarded annually to an outstanding female student at the Stockholm School of Economics. In the same year, she founded the network BBB - Barbro's Best & Brightest for young ambitious women, initially only for Business School students but later broadened to include women from other universities and other areas of activity. 

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Want to know more?
Listen to Barbros "Sommarprat" in P1 (in Swedish).

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