Osvald Bjelland

Osvald Bjelland is a Norwegian entrepreneur, investor, global business executive, and cultural leader with a deep interest in people- and planet-positive models of growth. He is the founder and Chairman of Origination AS and the Origination Foundation, where he works to build a community of leaders from business, policy, the arts, and civil society committed to investing in service of people and the planet with long-term strategic foresight, with a particular focus on frontier markets.

He is also the founder and former Chairman and CEO of Xynteo, a strategic advisory business focused on energy transition and systems change. Bjelland founded The Performance Theatre, a global platform bringing together business leaders, Nobel Laureates, scientists, policymakers, and artists to explore solutions to major societal challenges.

Bjelland is a Senior Fellow for the Sustainable Investing Research Initiative (SIRI) at Columbia University. He has also been a visiting business fellow at Oxford University and a visiting scholar at Stanford University. He holds a PhD from the University of Leeds, an MBA from Henley Business School, and a BA from BI Norwegian Business School.