Maria Amelie is an award-winning writer of four books on immigration, freedom of speech and entrepreneurship.  At 24, her first book Illegally Norwegian  became a bestseller and boosted a huge debate and a movement on refugees and contributed to a law change on immigration in Norway. At 29, after working as tech-journalist for four years, she was awarded Best Startup Journalist for her articles on growing ecosystem in the Nordics. In 2017 she took a leap of faith, crowdfunded and published her 4th book on successful Norwegian founders, or as many call it the Startup Bible.

In 2017-2018 she was representing Norwegian entrepreneurs as a fellow of Young Transatlantic Innovation Leaders Initiative, a program of the U.S.Department of State in partnership with the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She is also a sought after public speaker and have spoken at TedX, Google, Circle of Top European Communicators, Heroes Conference, BI Business School etc.

As a young man Nicolai Strøm-Olsen tried to change the world through politics – at 20 he became the leader of the young conservatives (Akershus Unge Høyre) in Akershus the county surrounding Oslo. It sparked interest in art in society and he wrote a biography about the artist Hans Gude. In 2009 he co-founded the leading Nordic art magazine: KUNSTforum and the art conference Kunstweekend.no

While reporting about culture and city development, he was struck by how startups and artists revive cities in Europe and around the world. He has written three books on business, culture and city development, among Bykamp (2014), Startup Europe, The Entrepreneurs transforming Europe (2016) and Startup Israel – argument breeds innovation (2017). In the process Nicolai has evolved as an inspired public speaker touring medium sized cities with his book Bykanp and presenting at Peter Drücker Forum (Vienna), Arabnet digital summit (Dubai) and Oslo Innovation Week. 

After a serendipitous meeting with Nicolai and Maria in Amman, Jordan, Esther joined our team to help keep everything running smoothly. She has over nine years of experience in humanitarian aid at the local and global level, having worked on international advocacy for girl refugees at Malala Fund, engaged with rural-urban migrants through English and education workshops in Nepal, Mexico and India. She has also conducted international research on migrant social organizing in Morocco and lead after-school programs for resettled refugees in the U.S.

She is currently based in Amman, Jordan where she spends her time supporting a small but mighty local newsroom called Syria:direct and keeping up with her arabic language studies.