The Astrid Lindgren Company
For the first time, Astrid Lindgren’s children and grandchildren – the owners of The Astrid Lindgren Company – are recruiting a new CEO from outside the family. This change is part of an overall strategy to transfer from an owner-managed organisation to owner-governed with the owners primarily focusing on long-term strategy and policy issues.
“We, the owners, have for some time discussed how our business should be organised and managed to best reach our long-term goals. We have grown from a small family business into a professional and modern licensing company. Whilst still preserving the strong culture founded on Astrid Lindgren’s guiding principles we look forward to this next step,” says Olle Nyman, who will be stepping in as the elected Chairman of the family’s Owner’s Council and Group Legal Director, after leaving his role as CEO.
The new CEO of The Astrid Lindgren Company is Cilla Nergårdh, who up until now has worked as the Head of Communications.
“We are very happy to have recruited Cilla Nergårdh. She knows our business well and has won both the owners’ and the staff’s trust. Her intuition and visionary leadership will ensure the company a continued success. My primary role will be to support the CEO in all the exciting opportunities that lie ahead of us,” says Nils Nyman, Chairman of the Board of The Astrid Lindgren Company.
Both Olle Nyman and Nils Nyman will thus remain as important assets to the company, as will two other owners – Annika Lindgren and Malin Billing – who will continue working with content and corporate values.
“I am incredibly proud to have been entrusted with the task of leading Astrid Lindgren’s stories into the future,” says Cilla Nergårdh. “To me as the new CEO, there is great value in the owners remaining with the company, albeit in new roles. They possess great knowledge and experience, as well as an inner compass in terms of how to stay loyal to the original stories and to Astrid Lindgren herself.”
The Astrid Lindgren Company manages all the rights to Astrid Lindgren’s works. Astrid Lindgren’s stories and characters come to life through the books, the films, the plays, and the toys that are created with trusted partners.
Perhaps best known around the world for her Pippi Longstocking character, when Astrid Lindgren published her first books in the beginning of the 1940s no one realised what an enterprise she had set in motion. For as long as Astrid Lindgren was alive and in good health she managed her own rights. For many years she did so by herself, and then later with her trusted colleague Kerstin Kvint. The company that came to be the basis for ‘Saltkråkan’ was founded at the end of the 1960s. This company was called ‘Tre Lindgren’ and managed the rights to film, television and theatre productions. The name referred to Astrid Lindgren herself, as well as her son and daughter-in-law who worked for the company. Astrid, the author, however, waited until 1998 before starting the company that would manage her literary rights. That company was named ‘Saltkråkan’ after the book Seacrew Island. The two companies were later merged and are now owned by Astrid Lindgren’s descendants. During the spring of 2018 it changed name from ‘Saltkråkan AB’ to the Astrid Lindgren Company.
