Get to know Johanna Murby

I joined Ascend in August 2019. For me, several key elements are critical when choosing a place to work: the ability to develop as an individual continuously, have a varied work environment with ever-changing challenges, watch colleagues and clients take leaps and grow, and take on difficult questions and learn new things. But at the end of the day, it all boils down to the people. At Ascend, I have the chance to work with outstanding people that are highly skilled at what they do – and I can always count on having someone to stretch my thinking or discuss a tricky problem. But at the same time, a burst of shared laughter is never far away. Surrounding myself with people like that is truly a work privilege!  

I started my career within Fast Moving Consumer Goods working for Mars Inc. in the UK for six years. Initially within Procurement and then as a project manager of brand-driven activities for confectionery products. Observing how a group of people with various areas of expertise from different functions can come together to solve a problem (in this case, taking an idea of a new product all the way to shelf) set off my appetite for driving transformational change projects. Returning to Sweden, I started working as a Management Consultant at Connecta, later acquired by Acando, running projects in several industries and functional areas but primarily driving cross-functional transformation projects, often bridging Business and IT. Alongside working in client assignments, I have had different manager positions, and before joining Ascend, I headed up the business unit managing the Acando trainee program.  

I am now a Partner at Ascend and part of the management team, but we don’t have the hierarchical structure that I have experienced in my previous roles. Instead, we rotate responsibilities, and the building of Ascend is uniquely transparent and engages us all. We all work tightly together to build our company, to sell new projects and to deliver them.  

From a client’s perspective, I think Ascend has a unique way of engaging with our customers. It was eye-opening for me to see the results of the way we use co-creation as the core of our assignments and how we anchor change within the organizations we work with.