The Ninth Cohort
Stockholm School of Economics Fellows
Cäcilie Habbel is a Master’s student in Business and Management at the Stockholm School of Economics. She previously graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. At Oxford, she received her college’s scholarship and exhibition awards and specialised in international relations, political sociology and public economics.
Ms Habbel’s professional experience has concentrated on ESG-related challenges and corporate responsibility. She, for example, engaged Arla Foods’ NGO and public actor network to develop a strategy and best-practices in a multi-stakeholder project to support food supply chains in Ethiopia. This further demonstrated to her how collaborations between businesses and the public sector can be hugely impactful to address climate change and sustainable development issues. She is determined to leverage those partnerships in her future career. Her experience in a variety of sectors has also involved work with a British NGO and a German start-up. Ms Habbel is a bilingual German and English speaker with proficiency in Spanish, French and Swedish.
As a Wallenberg Fellow in Washington this summer, she worked in the Global Affairs team of Medtronic, the global leader in medical technology. She focused on strategic projects with multilateral and bilateral development agencies and international organizations including the United Nations, with a focus on ESG-related questions, emerging markets and the business impact of trade relations. Ms Habbel will continue her position at Medtronic through the fall semester.
Mondrita Iffat Rashid is a Master’s in Economics student at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE). She was named in the Director’s Honour List upon graduation from the Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka with a Bachelor’s in Business Administration, majoring in Finance. She is interested in working with monetary economics, especially in developing countries – something she intends to explore further in future PhD studies.
Prior to joining SSE, Mondrita worked in the Deals Strategy & Operations team of PwC Bangladesh, where she supported multinationals and local corporations with market entry strategy, commercial due diligence, and business planning projects. She also has experience in finance and data analytics. She is a native speaker of Bangla and speaks fluent English, Hindi, and French, as well as intermediate Swedish.
During the summer, Mondrita interned at the Atlantic Council, a think tank, with its GeoEconomics Center. She learned about the research and preparation process for memos, articles, and long-form reports intended to inform policymakers of complex economic issues. One of the specific issues in her portfolio is the analysis of US “”friend-shoring”” or de-risking global supply chains from China.” Mondrita will continue her position at the Atlantic Council through the fall semester.
John Öberg is currently enrolled as a Master’s student at Stockholms School of Economics, where he is working towards his degree in Business Management. Prior to his Master’s program, he successfully completed the Bachelor Program in Business & Economics at the same prestigious institution. During his undergraduate studies, John specialized in Management and Marketing. Mr. Öberg also has additional academic experience from Uppsala University, Dalarna University and Karlstad University where he took courses in history, political science and journalism respectively.
While pursuing his Master’s degree, Mr. Öberg has held a part-time position at the strategic communications firm, Bellbird. In this role, he has been actively engaged in research, analysis, and copywriting, focusing specifically on sustainability and public relations. Furthermore, his passion for politics led him to serve as the youngest member of the local parliament in his hometown of Boden during the previous term. He is a native Swedish speaker, fluent in English and has intermediate knowledge of Spanish.
John interned at the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D.C., specifically working within their Public Sector Engagement team this past summer. His primary focus involved creating a comprehensive blueprint to support businesses in setting long-term goals related to their plastic footprint while defining the qualities and characteristics of effective leadership in this context. In addition to his internship, John also enhanced his knowledge in cross-cultural leadership by taking online courses through Cornell University. This fall semester, John is continuing his internship at the World Wildlife Fund.
Georgetown University Fellows
Jasmin Endler is a candidate for the Master of Arts in German and European Studies at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, where she is also pursuing an honors certificate in International Business Diplomacy. She is particularly interested in the intersection between policy and corporate strategy in regards to sustainability, innovation, and technology and has thus conducted extensive research on the impact of the Battery transition within the German Automotive Industry as supported by EU Policy.
Ms. Endler previously graduated summa cum laude from the University of Georgia, where she received her B.B.A in Marketing and International Business along with a Minor in International Affairs. During her undergraduate career, she spent a summer abroad in Verona, Italy studying Comparative Politics and Political Psychology.
Ms. Endler currently works as the Admissions Ambassador for the BMW Center for German and European Studies (CGES) at Georgetown University, where she serves as representative of the Program for prospective students, mentors admitted students, and manages various social media platforms. Prior to coming to Georgetown, Ms. Endler interned at NV Bekaert SA in Zwevegem, Belgium (remote) in corporate strategy for two consecutive summers. There, her interest in the intersection between the private and public sector sparked as she delivered insights into the impact of international Covid-19 restrictions and government packages on individual business units. She is a native German speaker, fluent in English, proficient in Spanish, and holds German and United States citizenships.
While in Stockholm, Ms. Endler is working at Ericsson as part of the Ericsson Connected Recycling (ECR) team. ECR is an incubation unit within Ericsson that digitalizes the reverse supply chain to enable and monetize circularity, allowing her to combine her academic passions with her work environment. Due to the intrapreneurial nature of this internship, she is able to contribute to a variety of tasks such as developing a marketing messaging framework, generating insights from raw pilot data to create valuable insights to customers, creating visuals showcasing the pilot project for both external and internal presentations, assisting with financial revenue projections for business cases, and researching the competitive and regulatory environment.
Roberto Lopez-Irizarry is a candidate for the Master of Science in Foreign Service at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service with a concentration in Global Business, Finance, and Society.
Mr. Lopez-Irizarry graduated Cum Laude with honors distinction from New York University, where he studied Political Science and Public Policy. As an undergraduate, he led a student group advocating for voting rights and designating election day as a university holiday.
Mr. Lopez-Irizarry’s preceding experience concentrates on the intersection of sustainability, international relations, and finance. Previously, he worked at the Atlantic Council’s Geoeconomics Center researching how markets are impacted by geopolitics and global monetary policy regimes. He also worked within Eurasia Group’s Financial Institutions practice advising clients on sustainability and global digital asset regulation. Prior to Georgetown, he worked on food security and climate finance within the International Fund for Agricultural Development’s New York Office. Mr. Lopez-Irizarry is from Miami, Florida and is a fluent Spanish speaker.
In Stockholm, Mr. Lopez-Irizarry worked as an Intern for EQT’s Group Sustainability team. He led a bespoke project mapping the Private Equity competitive landscape on ESG financial disclosures. Further, he conducted data analysis on EQT AB’s sustainability metrics and analyzed portfolio company ESG performance. While at EQT, he gained exposure to the interconnections between the investment life cycle and sustainability-linked due diligence. Mr. Lopez-Irizarry’s summer pushed him to dive deeper into the links between sustainability and finance.
Josephine Sylvestre is a Master’s student at Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service studying German and European Studies with an honour’s certificate in International Business Diplomacy. Ms. Sylvestre is a Fulbright-Schuman scholar, the program co-funded by the European Commission and the US Department of State aimed at promoting the EU-US relationship.
Prior to Georgetown, Ms. Sylvestre graduated from the small-scale interdisciplinary BSc. (Hons.) in PPLE (Politics, Psychology, Law and Economics) at the University of Amsterdam. During her degree she majored in European and International Law. Beyond her studies, Ms. Sylvestre was the Co-President of the transatlantic policy incubator chapter of European Horizons. As part of her term she co-founded the annual Amsterdam Policy Prize which gave students the opportunity to present improvements to the circular economy policies announced by the Amsterdam City Council.
After her undergraduate studies, Ms. Sylvestre was a Schuman Trainee at the European Parliament Liaison Office in the UK where she worked on fostering EU-UK relations post-Brexit. Through parliamentary monitoring and various stakeholder engagements, she took a particular interest in the future of EU-UK trade. Furthermore, Ms. Sylvestre is Franco-German and grew up in London and therefore speaks fluent French, English and German.
During her time in Stockholm, Ms. Sylvestre worked at Ericsson in the industry digitalisation team (Industry 4.0). She supported her team in the business development process of implementing private 5G networks to mines, ports, airports, factories and offshore energy sites around the world. Ms. Sylvestre was able to be a part of establishing and maintaining core industry partners in Ericsson’s ecosystem as well as craft reports on industry trends highlighting new potential markets. After this experience, Ms. Sylvestre is looking forward to focusing the last year of graduate school on the geopolitics and competitiveness of critical technology with a particular focus on the US and Europe.
The Wallenberg International Fellows Program 