About Erik

Erik Fernholm is a thought leader, social entrepreneur and award-winning keynote speaker with an academic background in cognitive neuroscience and happiness research. He has dedicated his entire career to unraveling how personal growth connects to building a sustainable society and this devotion and expertise has made him one of Europe’s most sought-after keynote speakers.

At a young age Erik tragically lost his father, a Swedish olympic athlete, due to complications of steroid use. Growing up in the shadow of his father's legacy, Erik witnessed firsthand the sacrifices made in the pursuit of success. This experience led him to question the very fabric of societal values, exploring the paradoxical nature of success and well-being. As well a desire to understand not just the cost of success but the mechanisms through which society valorizes superficial achievement at the expense of deeper values.

A social entrepreneur and thought leader

Erik has been involved in launching a variety of initiatives to create forums for inner development. One of the earliest initiatives was named Better Schools, aiming to enhance academic results, well-being, and motivation in schools by offering a unique method based on modern psychological research. Simple tools that have supported thousands of teachers with evidence based tools.

In 2013, he came in contact with philanthropist Tomas Björkman and was offered a position on the board of the Ekskäret Foundation, where he since then oversees initiatives aimed at promoting understanding and practice of personal and social development. Erik is now Chair of the Ekskäret Foundation.

In 2015, Erik co-founded the 29k Foundation together with Norrsken Foundation and Ekskäret Foundation, with the mission to democratize inner development by building the world's first scalable platform making mental health and inner development tools available to millions - free of charge for users.

During that same period, Erik identified the need to build a global narrative around the necessity of inner development. He then assembled a group of people who together founded the Inner Development Goals initiative in 2019. A global framework defining the individual and collective skills needed to reach the UN's Sustainable Development Goals that has now grown into a global movement of governments, large organisations and over 700 hubs across more than 80 countries. All working to enable the inner shifts needed for outer change to happen.