111: Karin Hélène is Head of the Director General’s Office of the European Spallation Source (ESS), a European intergovernmental research facility under construction in Lund, Sweden. ESS will probe materials and processes down to the atomic scale using beams of neutrons, with a wide range of applications from engineering to energy to the life sciences.

Karin is Swedish and has an extensive international background, having lived, studied and worked during a period of almost 20 years in the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Thailand. She started her career as Executive Assistant in 1987 in Saudi Arabia and has worked within the private sector, the Swedish government and for non-profit organisations. She has worked at ESS since 2011.

Karin was nominated and runner up for the Swedish Office Professionals Award in 2014, she believes in life-long-learning and is constantly looking for opportunities to develop her role, her most recent training focusing on the role of Chief-of-Staff and Management.

Karin Hélène is the former Chair of International Management Assistants (IMA) in Southern Sweden and member of the Swedish National Board. Since 2020 she is a member of IMA Global Executive Committee where her role is Executive Governance Officer. Since 2018 she has represented Sweden at the World Administrators Summit.

2015 she founded an internal network for assistants and support personnel at ESS and since a few years she is a mentor for students of the ‘certified Executive Business Assistant’ education.

Connect with Karin:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-hélène

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Karin_EFH

European Spallation Source ERIC (ESS): https://europeanspallationsource.se/

International Management Assistant (IMA): https://www.ima-network.org/

World Administrator Summit: https://wa-alliance.com/home/world-administrators-summit/