About
Ingrid
Sårheim
Forssell
About
Marketing and communications leader with a track record across category-defining companies in tech, architecture, design and consumer goods. I work across brand strategy, marketing, PR, and communications – not as separate functions, but as one integrated growth lever.
My sharpest edge is earned media – the kind that builds trust and cuts through without a big budget. What matters to me is whether the work moves the business, not just the vanity metrics.
I prefer environments where the brief is open and the playbook doesn't exist yet. I've delivered strong results in large, complex organisations, but I'm at my best when there's real room to invent.
In my experience, small teams with high agency beat large teams with heavy process. I try to build environments of trust, high standards, and room to experiment — and that's also where people do their best work.
The best teams I've been part of had one thing in common: we found the answers by doing the work, not by waiting for the perfect plan. Colleagues consistently tell me I help keep spirits up under pressure — because I love the work, and that tends to be contagious. I lead with warmth and a sense of humour — and I've found that goes a long way.
I'm fascinated by how people actually make decisions – whether they're a consumer, an enterprise buyer, or a voter. Not how they report making decisions, but how they actually do. That's part of why Daniel Kahneman's work on decision-making has shaped a lot of how I think about brand and marketing – a thread that runs back to my studies in behavioural economics at Copenhagen Business School's Centre for Decision Neuroscience.
Kahneman's research shows that most decisions are driven by System 1 thinking – the fast, instinctive, emotional part of the brain that relies on heuristics and pattern recognition. People form impressions in milliseconds, judge books by their covers, and rationalise the decision afterwards.
It's also why Apple, in 1977, built "impute" into their marketing strategy – the deliberate belief that quality must be signalled through every visual touchpoint, not just delivered in the product itself. Getting the substance right matters. Getting the optics right matters just as much.
At Snøhetta, we operated by a similar principle: the best images get the best press. That's why I've always treated visual storytelling as a strategic discipline, not a creative afterthought.
Before my full-time career, I spent one year at Geelmuyden Kiese – one of Scandinavia's leading PR agencies – first as a student associate in Copenhagen, then as a summer intern in Oslo. It's where I learned the craft of strategic communications from the ground up, and where the interest in earned media that has defined my career was properly formed.
At the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen, I worked as a commercial intern with the U.S. Foreign Commercial Services – conducting market analyses, facilitating trade between American exporters and Danish firms, and assisting at the CNN Town Hall interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Black Diamond Library. A formative early experience in the intersection of commerce, politics, and public affairs.
From 2007 to 2013, I was deeply involved in the European Youth Parliament – one of Europe's largest youth organisations – progressing from delegate to chairperson, vice president, and president at conferences across Europe, and co-founded both EYP Oslo and EYP Denmark. Six years of real leadership, cross-cultural collaboration, and political discourse at a formative age – and where my belief in the power of well-argued narratives first took root.