Kjerstin Elisabeth Rasmussen Braathen (born 1970) is a Norwegian business executive who is active in the banking and financial sectors. Since September 2019, she has been

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

DNB ASA DNB ASA (formerly DnB NOR ASA) is Norway's largest financial services group with total combined assets of more than NOK 1.9 trillion and a market capitalisation NOK 164 billion as of 20 May 2016. DNB's head office is located in Oslo. The two lar ...

, Norway's largest

financial services Financial services are the Service (economics), economic services provided by the finance industry, which encompasses a broad range of businesses that manage money, including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, acco ...

group. A graduate at the École supérieure de commerce in

Nice Nice ( , ; Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative c ...

, after four years with Hydro Agri, she joined DNB in 1999.

Biography

Born in 1970, Kjerstin Elisabeth Rasmussen was brought up in

Lillestrøm Lillestrøm is a municipality in Viken county. It is located in the traditional district of Romerike. With a population of 85,757 inhabitants, it is the fourth most populated municipality in Viken. It was founded on 1 January 2020 as a merger be ...

where her parents ran a clothes shop called "Rasmussen på Torget". She helped run the establishment as she grew up, learning much about the economic aspects of businesses. Together with her husband Henning Braathen, she has three children. She chose to study in France because she enjoyed the French language. While studying in Nice, she met many people from different cultures and this broadened her views. She earned a master's degree in Management and Finance from the École supérieure de commerce in Nice in 1995. On graduating, she held various positions in Norsk Hydro before joining DNB where she was initially involved with shipping, offshore and logistics. She subsequently served as DNB's Group Executive Vice President of Corporate Banking. Braathen is a strong proponent of equality between men and women in business. Her tenure at DNB has nevertheless been more difficult than she expected, although she is herself a prime example of a female chief executive of a listed company in Norway. She has explained that it is important to pick the right people for management positions, avoiding the needs of diversity to employ the wrong people.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Braathen, Kjerstin 1970 births Living people Businesspeople from Oslo Norwegian bankers Norwegian economists 21st-century Norwegian businesswomen 21st-century Norwegian businesspeople Women bankers Norwegian chief executives