Karolina Olofsson is the first female Executive Director of the Oslo Center. Prior joining the Oslo Center, Ms. Olofsson was deployed by the Norwegian Capacity (NORCAP) expertise provider to Niger, where she worked with the United Nations to strengthen the localisation agenda in the Lake Chad Basin area. In 2018 she was in Colombia, also with the UN to develop agency strategies to support the peace agreement process.

Between 2006 and 2017, Ms. Olofsson also worked in several post-conflict contexts, such as Libya, Kosovo, Darfur, Ukraine and Afghanistan. She was in Kabul between 2009 and 2012, where she worked amongst other for Adam Smith International in the Afghan Ministry of Finance to help develop their fiscal transparency policies and processes to strengthen public participation, budgetary efficiency and institutional accountability.

Prior entering the international development sector, Ms. Olofsson initially worked in the private sector in Europe in fraud detection and continuous compliance of financial standards, which lead her to specialise in governance compliance. Over the years she has led teams, coordinated organisations, advised institutions and collaborated amongst others with the European Commission, INTERPOL, United States Congress, Parliament of the United Kingdom and international donors on international agendas.

Ms. Olofsson holds a PhD in Humanitarianism and Conflict Response from the University of Manchester, and two Masters in Conflict Management and Post-War Reconstruction from the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy and the University of York in the UK. She has also a Bachelor (Honours) in Economics and Sociology from the University of York.