Our board of directors
Jón Helgi Egilsson, Ph.D., Chairman
Jón is the former vice-chairman and chairman of the supervisory board of the Central Bank of Iceland (2013-2017). He holds a master's degree in engineering from DTU, Copenhagen, Denmark, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Iceland. Jón Helgi has contributed to academia as a former adjunct professor in financial engineering at Reykjavik University and as a visiting scholar at Columbia University, New York City.
Jón has co-founded four software companies, and served as Head of Capital Markets at Landsbanki bank. Jón discovered Bitcoin in 2012 and has since co-authored several reports on cryptocurrencies and blockchains, including a cover article in Proceedings of the IEEE.
Magnús E. Björnsson, Ph.D.
Magnús was elected to the Board of Directors of Monerium in September 2017. Specializing in Big Data and product development, Magnús lead the core development of the Big Data Discovery product at Oracle, where he had been Senior Director of Engineering from 2013. Magnús is currently the CEO of Men & Mice - a leading team of international experts in the DNS, DHCP and IP address management (DDI) business.
After completing Bachelor’s degrees in Theoretical Physics and Computer Science respectively at the University of Iceland, Magnús continued his studies at Brandeis University in Massachusetts where he graduated with a Master’s and subsequently a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science.
Danielle Pamela Neben
Danielle is a Partner at Maresías as well as a Senior Consultant at Fidelio Partners. She provides consultancy services from strategic planning to promoting excellence in stakeholder engagement.
Danielle has 25 years of banking experience in 8 countries: 20 years at HSBC in a variety of roles as Chief Operating Officer, Group Investor Relations, Corporate & Personal Banking, Labour Law and Risk Management. She was a Member of the Board at Landsbankinn from 2013 to 2017, where she chaired both the Audit and Strategic Development Committees. She is currently a Member of the Boards at Meniga and Monerium. She is also the Iceland Representative for Nordic Finance Innovation and Chair of NFI Women.
Danielle holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree with a major in Finance and a minor in German from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She is native in English and French, advanced in Icelandic and Brazilian Portuguese, intermediate in German, and basic in Mandarin and Spanish.
Gunnar Haraldsson, Ph.D.
Former Chair Financial Supervisory Authority of Iceland, Director Inst. of Economic Studies (Univ. of Iceland) , founder Intellecon. Economist B.Sc. (Univ. of Iceland), Ph.D. (Univ. of Toulouse).
Helga Valfells
Prior to co-founding Crowberry in 2017 Helga was CEO of NSA Ventures from 2010 - 2017, where she managed a total of 41 start-up companies, three Venture funds and negotiated a total of 14 exits. She was also Chairman of the board of Frumtak where she was responsible for a total of 13 growth companies. From 1999 to 2005 Helga managed a number of marketing and funding initiatives for start-ups on behalf of the Trade Council of Iceland.
Before joining the Icelandic venture community, Helga worked for Merrill Lynch, Estee Lauder and Islandsbanki Securities. Helga also worked as an advisor the Icelandic Minister of Business in the wake of the financial crisis in 2009.
Holds an MBA from London Business School and a Bachelor's degree from Harvard University.
