Executive Certificate
in
Management and Leadership
Bio
Espen's passion is to be a change agent for organizations and individuals in terms of being an Executive & Team Coach, Consultant, and Researcher. His clinical backbone is working as a psychologist (both group and individual therapy) with borderline patients at Oslo University Hospital. Espen's interests span from psychology to economics, and from blockchain technology to climate change. Currently, he is learning Smart Contract programming on Ethereum & EOS (blockchain) at the Ivan on Tech Academy, and works as Blockchain Consultant at Kvintessens AS.
He is educated coach from INSEAD (EMC & ICC), psychologist from The University of Oslo, and journalist from The Oslo Metropolitan University. He holds the MIT Sloan Executive Certificate in Management and Leadership, focused on Blockchain Technology, AI, and Internet of Things. His path of education also contains music, medicine, and economics.
Espen is currently doing a PhD in psychology, which aims to bridge the current gap between the so-called specific and general factors in psychotherapy. His official title is "Head of Quality Lab for Psychotherapy" at The Norwegian National Advisory Unit. This lab primarily measures adherence and quality for Mentalization-based treatment (MBT), which is an evidence-based treatment for borderline personality disorder. He is currently co-authoring a manual with Professor Sigmund Karterud and Mickey Kongerslev on MBT. Espen finds that mentalization is as essential for leaders and organizations as for clients and patients.
From 2005 to 2018 he was part of a group in The Diamond Approach (DA) led by Sandra Maitri. He was also part of the teacher training in DA for a couple of years, and has been interested in the psychological tools provided by Buddhism (Mahamudra), Sufism, and other wisdom traditions for a couple of decades. He has studied meditation and hypnosis with Harvard Professor Daniel Brown.
As a guitarist, Espen was a soloist in Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez” aged 21, and studied classical guitar at the Norwegian Academy of Music. He has also been a finalist in the Norwegian youth championship on 400 meters. Being an amateur chess player, he is currently rated around 2000 on chess.com (https://www.chess.com/member/unenumerated).
In terms of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, Espen supports Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, and Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, in their hope and belief that Bitcoin will become a single global currency. Such a return to a (digital) gold standard would disallow taxation through inflation (Ray Dalio: "Cash is trash").
