Cecilia Öman

From early age have I been dedicated to making this world a good and comfortable place for everyone; children, women and men equally. I have always been amazed by scientific research as well as by people and different cultures. I have passion for good values and for challenging development programmes. I believe in cross-cultural equal partnership, in needs driven approaches, and in staying strong for each other.

My career focus has been on natural environmental protection and poverty alleviation. I initiated my career at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm and took a M.Sc. exam in Chemistry Engineering. I traveled to Nicaragua for my thesis and stayed three months to learn more about living conditions and doing research in non-OECD countries. I was thereafter employed by the Swedish Environmental Research Institute (IVL, Svenska Miljöinstitutet) in Stockholm as consultant and researcher. I worked with water and waste management at IVL and registered in parallel as a PhD student at KTH. I decided to broaden my perspectives of water management and to increase my understanding of non-OECD country conditions and accepted an employment at the International Foundation for Science (IFS). I designed and initiated the Water Resource research area at IFS and was appointed scientific coordinator. My task at IFS was to support researchers in non-OECD countries to do research on topics selected by them and in their home countries, and I appreciate the IFS needs-driven approach. Besides giving training and coaching to researchers in non-OECD countries, we reviewed research proposals, distributed grants and addressed access to advanced scientific equipment. I continued my own scientific research at KTH in parallel with my employment at IFS and took the associate professor degree. My research topic was 'water management in non-OECD countries'. In parallel with my assignments at IFS and KTH, I decided to develop and implement an innovative strategy addressing extreme poverty eradication and founded the volunteer organisation Action10 (www.action10.org), where I developed the value platform the Ten Actions (TAct) and the outcome evaluation planning tool (ROPE). Action10 is now managed by 30 volunteers and runs 20 programmes in seven non-OECD countries. All programs are needs driven, has equal partnership and a sustainable economy. The strategy was found successful and the organisation is improving the living conditions of thousands persons. In order to scale-up the Action10 success story did I registered the social enterprise Human Rights and Science, HR&S (www.humanrightsandscience.se) in December 2015, where I work part-time. HR&S offers opportunities to researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs in non-OECD countries to implement their ideas. The Institution also provide scientific capacity strengthening support and training and coaching in 'institutional capacity and sustainable economy', 'cross-cultural partnership', 'real-time outcome planning and evaluation' and 'access to advanced scientific equipment'. I was at the same time employed as part-time Assistant Programme Director in Chemical Sciences at the International Science Programme at Uppsala University. My tasks at ISP is to support non-OECD country academic institutions, provide scientific capacity strengthening support and to fundraise.