Lina Bertling Tjernberg wins 2021 Power Woman of the Year Award

What does being named 2021 Power Woman of the Year mean to you personally?

“Even nominated for the Power Woman of the Year Award together with 170 brilliant women is an incredibly big honour. When Robert Andrén, Director General of the Swedish Energy Agency, read out the jury citation for the Award, I was more touched than I have ever been before in my professional career. Of getting such wonderful feedback about my work really meant a massive amount for me. That one of my great role models, former Minister for Energy Ibrahim Baylan, was also at the event, and that the Minister for Energy Anders Ygeman presented the diploma was an incredible honour. This award has given me a real energy and power boost to continue the work I am doing,” says Bertling Tjernberg.

Why should anyone work in the energy sector?

“For me, the answer is clear, there is nothing more inspiring than working to contribute to creating solutions for a sustainable society in the future, and this is exactly what a job in the energy sector can entail.”

Why is this award needed?

“The transition of the energy system to enable a sustainable society is top of our agenda. To achieve this, we need to include all the talents we can and we need to work together and engage with different parties. We can see enormous growth ahead and a greater need for know-how provision within the energy sector. Diversity will accordingly be one of the keys to this solution and we must leverage our resources as best we can.”

“Power Women is an association and a network that aims to raise the profiles of and promote highly talented women in the energy sector and at the same time, dispel the notion that there is a shortage of experienced women in the energy sector. The network aims to increase the proportion of women in management groups and boards in energy sector companies and organisations. Having more female role models in executive positions, will attract more women to the sector. The Power Woman of the Year Award is therefore an important tool in helping to achieve this goal and accordingly accelerate the energy system reset.”

Motivation

“This year, the Power Woman of the year Award goes to a woman, who in the traditionally male dominated energy sector, has been able to become a strong force and guarantor for a more gender balanced talent provision within the sustainable energy systems of both today and tomorrow. With her unmistakable enthusiasm, leadership and staying power, she has systematically and in a successful way, built foundations and platforms in a farsighted study programme to educate tomorrow’s energy sector employees. Via her work, she is an important bridge between education and enterprise in shaping future know-how in a rapidly changing energy system.

She highlights how vital and crucial it is for the energy sector to reach out to coming generations by actively communicating with school age children and teenagers, not least girls, in painting an exciting and attractive picture of a more digitalised and electrified energy system.

With strength, patience and concrete actions in her role as a professor in the academic arena, she has been able to build a strong scientific and media platform on her own merits to raise energy issues far beyond being purely a technical issue. In naming Lina Bertling Tjernberg this year’s Power Woman, we wish to give her more wind in her sails in her quest to persuade more young people, not least girls, to choose and be welcomed into the energy sector and thereby contribute to genuine and long term gender equality.”

Read more about the event, in Swedish