“Woman On Top”
In 2015, Katriina Öberg’s life changed forever. She was in a year-long leadership course program with other senior female leaders from companies all over Sweden, called Women Leaders Up. They explored and developed their leadership skills. Öberg’s team from the course program still meets every quarter to share experiences, support, and challenge each other.
Öberg is Regional Vice President APAC at Mölnlycke Health Care. She first joined in 1999 as their Nordic Brand Manager. She has moved up almost every threein various marketing and sales positions in local and HQ organisation years since, learning on the job as well as from external training. Öberg credits her success to the learning culture within the company and the people around her, who believed in her and offered her opportunities for growth. Her seniors, juniors and peers have supported her in her learning. She firmly believes in a combination of formal and informal development.
Mölnlycke is a supplier of wound care and surgical products. It was started in 1849 as a textile manufacturer, in the town of Mölnlycke. The company became a key supplier of gauze to Swedish hospitals in the early 1900s, then added swabs and dressings to their repertoire. Nowadays, their Safetac® technology makes wound dressing removal almost painless. Their tailor-made trays for the operating rooms minimize waste. Digital tools monitor the quantity and manage the equipment in the trays. Last year, Mölnlycke posted revenues of EUR 1.54 billion (consolidated net sales) worldwide.
Öberg’s role model when growing up was her grandmother, who was a very hardworking and resilient woman. She was a widow and the sole breadwinner of the family, and had to sacrifice a lot to make ends meet. This beacon of strength and resilience became Öberg’s inspiration to live these values throughout her professional life.
Since August last year, Öberg has been based in Singapore. Her biggest challenge is in attracting the right talent in this dynamic geographyfinding top talent here in this region. Back in the Nordic region, Mölnlycke is a well-known household health care brand and hiring wasn’t a problemmore easy, because there “everyone wanted to work for Mölnlycke” So Öberg wants to continue building the employer brand identity of Mölnlycke here in the APAC region, as well as expand the organizationbusiness.
“With the emergence of stellar women world leaders come an equally impressive breed of new female top executives who are not afraid to put their humanity forward and use it as a way to unite their organizations”.
Shanggari Balakrishnan, Chief Executive Officer, MORS Group
