Anna König Jerlmyr

Anna König Jerlmyr is the former Mayor of Stockholm and one of Europe’s most influential voices on how cities can grow, decarbonize, and remain livable at the same time. Elected in 2018 after a career in the Swedish Parliament and Stockholm City Hall, she led the Swedish capital through a period in which it was named the smartest city in the world by the Smart City Expo World Congress and ranked among the most sustainable cities on the planet.

Sustainability speaker Anna König Jerlmyr built her reputation on turning ambitious climate targets into concrete municipal policy: fossil-free transport, climate-positive district development, digital public services, and procurement rules that used the city’s purchasing power to demand sustainable solutions. Her green-blue coalition made innovation and sustainability the twin pillars of Stockholm’s growth strategy while keeping residents’ quality of life at the center.

Her leadership reached well beyond Sweden. She served as President of Eurocities, the largest network of major European cities, and as Vice Chair and Steering Committee Co-Chair of C40, the global coalition of mayors committed to tackling climate change. She has sat on the World Economic Forum’s Net Zero Carbon Cities Supervisory Board and its Global Future Council on Cities of Tomorrow, as well as the Board of Trustees of Friends of Europe, and has been recognized among Europe’s leading mayors.

From City Hall to the Boardroom

Before becoming mayor, König Jerlmyr was a member of the Swedish Riksdag from 2006 to 2010, then Vice Mayor for Social Affairs and Chair of Stockholm’s Police Authority, and later Opposition Vice Mayor. That trajectory gave her firsthand experience of coalition building, crisis management, and the hard trade-offs of public leadership, including steering a capital city through the pandemic.

Today she is CEO of the Arwidsson Foundation, a Swedish foundation dedicated to sustainable urban development, and serves on corporate and advisory boards, including Pihr, a technology company focused on equal pay, and the property-technology investor AGV Invest. She is a regular speaker at international forums on urban governance, the future of living, and gender equality in technology.

As a speaker, Anna König Jerlmyr gives senior audiences a rare combination: the perspective of a head of government who actually delivered on climate and innovation goals, and the candor of a leader who knows what that costs politically. Her keynotes cover sustainable and smart cities, leadership with impact, public-private collaboration, and how organizations can futureproof themselves the way a city must. Audiences leave with practical frameworks drawn from real decisions rather than theory, and a clearer sense of how to lead change when every stakeholder is watching.