Mette Suzanne Husemoen, Ph.D.

Founder of the M.S. Husemoen Studio, Mette is also the founder and creative director of LEIDA, the Transcultural Innovators' House, co-founder of the Tsinghua Alumni North Europe East-West Dialogue (TANEWD), and chairwoman of the Norwegian Chinese Friendship Association (NCFA). In 2008, encouraged by the late Master Nan Huaijin, she co-founded NEX in Norway and co-initiated the Society for Organizational Learning in China (SoL China) together with her postdoctoral advisor, MIT management expert Peter Senge, and others. During her college years, Mette co-founded ISFiT, the International Student Festival in Trondheim, which has grown into the world’s largest student festival, and co-hosted its inaugural opening in 1990, where former Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland delivered the opening speech. She holds a PhD in Management, an MSc in Physics, and a Diplôme d'Ingénieur from IFP in Paris.

As postdoctoral researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Mette initiated collaboration with Tsinghua and Peking University, Chinese and multinational companies, government organizations including the forerunner of the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment, and environmental NGOs. While in Beijing, she coordinated the ELIAS China Deep Dive Learning Journey as part of the ELIAS -Emerging Leaders for Innovation Across Sectors- global leadership program at MIT, and was founding president of KlubbNorge Beijing. She is passionate about east-west collaboration and exchange, particularly in the fields of clean energy, health, education and transcultural leadership towards a more sustainable future. She enjoys working across sector, across discipline, and across culture.

As managing partner of NEX, Mette explores ways in which to skillfully integrate, innovate and transcend the traditions and approaches of the East and the West to help facilitate joint technology innovations and deeper learning for transforming society into a more ecological civilization. Mette has had the unique opportunity to study with late Master Nan Huaijin, one of China's most acknowledged teachers of classic Chinese culture, and founder of the Taihu Great Learning Center (TGLC) outside Shanghai. Mette was encouraged by late Master Nan to establish Nordic-China cultural and educational exchange emphasizing sustainability and the environment, in a spirit of east-west dialogue.

At college, Mette co-founded and led the first ISFiT, International Student Festival in Trondheim, Norway, which has since established itself as the world's largest biennial international student festival. At NTNU, Mette co-founded also a student group initiating alternative ways of teaching and learning, particularly emphasizing cooperative learning, in close collaboration with the leadership of the school. In 1988, Mette was invited to lecture and share the project at Tsinghua University, Beijing.

Mette has a unique international background and interdisciplinary profile, including graduate studies in Paris, Harvard and MIT, and postdoctoral research at NTNU, MIT and Tsinghua University working closely with Dr. Peter Senge, MIT and SoL, a pioneer in systems thinking, collaborative leadership, and their application to sustainability and, who has been at the forefront of organizational learning since the publishing of his classic text The Fifth Discipline in 1990. Mette is also a loving mother of four children and currently resides in the greater Oslo area, Norway. These experiences have brought her and cultivated a deep learning and life experience in cross-boundary collaboration, innovation, and team creativity exchange.