Specialization(s):
Brand Management, Employee Communications/Internal Relations, Reputation Management
Björn Edlund retired from Royal Dutch Shell in March 2010, after four and a half years of reputation recover and corporate positioning.
On March 1, 2010, he reopened his consultancy. In addition to advising corporate clients and civil society sector leaders, Edlund conducts research, teaches, writes and speaks on communications and leadership as well as on advanced stakeholder management and business and human rights. From October 2011, Edlund serves as Chairman Europe, Middle East and Africa at Edelman.
At Shell, he was responsible for the global energy group’s worldwide reputation management, internally and externally. He implemented an integrated communications program centered on key themes and rebuilt the global function into cross-business, country-based and regionally connected units geared to provide better, proactive business support through more focused messaging and enhanced stakeholder interactions.
Edlund came to Shell from ABB Ltd, where he headed communications from 1998, adding the leadership of sustainability affairs from early 2005. During the turnaround of ABB, when the company refocused on its core businesses, Edlund led a project to rebuild the values framework guiding the behavior of ABB’s more than 100,000 employees.
At ABB, Edlund helped integrate corporate responsibility and other sustainability aspects into business planning and practices, adding human rights considerations to business risk assessments and closely engaging stakeholders in annual dialogues in the main countries. Edlund co-founded the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights, a multi-company project aimed at helping business integrate human rights responsibilities into day-to-day practices.
Edlund has been working in business communications since 1989, when he joined The Rowland Company, a U.S. communications agency, as a senior consultant based in Zurich. Swiss chemical-pharmaceuticals group Sandoz AG recruited him in 1992 to head its global communications network. After Sandoz merged with Ciba to form Novartis in 1996, Edlund set up his own communications consultancy. Clients included Novartis, Schering pharmaceuticals of Berlin, Philip Morris Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and from early 1998 the ABB Group.
Edlund was trained as a teacher and taught secondary school in Basel. He began his international career in news agency journalism in 1977 when he joined United Press International as a staff correspondent in Sweden. He later served as UPI’s news editor in Germany and bureau chief in Spain. He covered politics, general news, wars, sports and human-interest stories. His sorties included reporting from Lebanon 1978 during the civil war, from Poland during the Solidarity uprising in 1980 and in early 1982 after the democracy movement had been quashed. Other key stories included Spain’s transition to democracy and the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Edlund organized UPI’s 1982 soccer world cup coverage in Spain.
In 1983, he joined Reuters in London as a World Desk editor and later was posted to Mexico as Chief Correspondent. He served for a period as Reuters News Editor, Latin America and the Caribbean, and for two years as Chief Correspondent in Germany. With Reuters, Björn led text and news picture coverage of the civil wars in Central America, Argentina’s newfound democracy, the opposition to General Augusto Pinochet’s rule in Chile, the ouster of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier in Haiti, Brazil’s development, and natural disasters including the 1986 earthquake in Mexico City and a landslide that killed 20,000 people at Armero in Colombia. Other highlights included President Reagan’s historic trip to West Berlin in 1988, the agricultural reforms of the European Community, and reporting from Teheran after the downing of an Iran Air jetliner over the Gulf by a U.S. warship. He organized the coverage of the 1986 world soccer cup in Mexico, and reported from the Olympic Games in Los Angeles 1984 and Seoul 1988.
Björn Edlund works in English, German, Spanish and French, as well as in his native Swedish. He and his Swiss wife Veronika, a physiotherapist, have homes near Basel and in Sweden. Their multi-lingual daughter Rebekka, who holds an MA from Basel University, works in-house as a senior communications manager in internal communications.
