If you are lucky enough to visit Hemsedal someday, there is a high chance that you may run into Isabella Alveberg. An athlete by heart and a business executive by profession, Isabella is currently the CEO at Snøhetta. “I spend about half my time traveling to visit employees in our other studios, and then the other half I spend at our home office in Oslo,” Isabella tells us in an exclusive conversation.
But there are times when she takes her CEO attire off, dons her ski boots, garbs a helmet, and embarks on an adventure to Skiresort in Hemsedal, Norway. “I was very interested in sports when young. So when I went to university for my higher studies, I was on a ski scholarship,” she informs. Skiing goes in generations for Isabella. Her eldest son is a skiing enthusiast, which is why you would often find Isabella in Hemsedal and other skiing destinations cheering for her kid, when not skiing herself.
When not with her family, she has another child to cater to: Snøhetta. The Norwegian-born executive has been at the helm of the global architectural company since 2018. Before joining Snohetta, she worked as Vice President for Business Operations at Avast Software and was Director Windows with Microsoft. “I am not a design person. I more have a head for numbers and for organizing chaos,” she states.
This is why, Isabella’s time is usually spent either in team meetings with her managers across the globe, or she is busy adhering to client needs. Upon finding some time from her busy schedule, she would either be looking at budgets or calculating risk management for company needs.
“What you did at AVAST or Microsoft is completely different from how you manage things at Snohetta. How challenging is the current role, considering you don’t come from a design or architectural background,” we asked her.
“Many of the leadership skills are transferable. So it’s about transparency, openness, setting a direction, talking to people, making sure everybody feels involved and heard, building a strategy, and executing that. I mean, that’s pretty similar from company to company,” she answers.
Isabella then sheds light on Snøhetta’s approach to fostering a multicultural and inclusive workplace, emphasizing the collective importance of each role within the global company. “As an organization, we strive to be multicultural, multigender, and reflect all the societies that we work in,” the CEO emphasizes.
As our discussion veers toward sustainability, Isabella shares Snøhetta’s commitment to regenerative architecture and design. “We like to talk about sustainable design, but we also like to talk about regenerative architecture and design, where it’s more proactive and giving back. I think we’ve been on a journey for the past couple of years to understand what sustainable design or regenerative design means for us. Snohetta was founded on the core principles of sustainability, and so we’ve always been very focused on the three pillars of sustainability, which have been social, environmental, and, governance, sustainability,” she notes.
Isabella emphasizes the company’s continuous pursuit of pushing boundaries and staying at the forefront of regenerative design. “For maybe the first 20 years, we were more focused on social sustainability, and then we’ve moved over to the environmental impact that our designs have. And so, as we talk as a company about regenerative architecture and what that means for us, I still think we’re trying to find our way and we’re trying to push the envelope in every single project we have.
Foresighting the future, Isabella highlights the excitement surrounding various projects and exhibitions. “We have tons of exciting projects coming up. I don’t think I can single out a project, but I would say that for me in 2024, it’s the company gathering that we’ll have again in September, where we bring all 300 employees to Oslo, and walk our snow mountain together. That’s, what I’m looking most forward to. That would be wonderful,” she states.
