Darja Isaksson
Director General of Vinnova
Darja Isaksson is Director General of Vinnova, Sweden’s national innovation agency, and serves as a member of the Swedish government’s National Digitalization Council. She has founded three companies and has worked with product innovation for over a decade. She has served as adviser to the Prime Minister’s Innovation Council, been recognized as one of Sweden’s most powerful opinion-makers by the financial magazine Veckans Affarer, and was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people in digital government by the website Apolitical. Isaksson’s lecture, “Possible Worlds: Innovation the Swedish Way,” will explore the role that Sweden played as an early industrializer and examine the current narrative around innovation and the importance of the humanities to effect change and drive new ideas.
Featuring a discussion with moderator Tobias Higbie
Tobias Higbie is Professor of History and Labor Studies at UCLA. He is also the chair of Labor Studies and Associate Director of the Institute for Research on Labor & Employment. Higbie is the author of two books, Labor’s Mind: an Intellectual History of the Working Class (2019) and Indispensable Outcasts: Hobo Workers and Community in the American Midwest (2003), as well as articles on migration, print culture, working-class education, and robots. Before coming to UCLA, Higbie worked as a labor educator, public historian, and briefly as a union organizer. He is a proud member of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO.