Kahoot! Leadership

Meet the savvy and passionate K!rew captains leading us on a mission to make learning awesome.

Executive management

Eilert Giertsen Hanoa

Chief Executive Officer

Eilert Giertsen Hanoa is the Chief Executive Officer at Kahoot!, with a mission to make learning awesome and empower everyone, including children, students and employees, to unlock their full learning potential. Eilert leads Kahoot!’s vision of building the leading learning platform in the world.

Eilert came in as the first investor in Kahoot! in 2014 and served as Chairman of the Board from 2015 until he was appointed as Chief Executive Officer in December 2019. He is also a board member and investor in several tech companies and start-ups.

Åsmund Furuseth

Chief Product Officer, Co-Founder

Before meeting the Kahoot! co-founders in 2013, Åsmund ran a wind turbine technology company called ChapDrive. Now, Åsmund advises and secures funding for various startups, where he holds Board Director roles. He owns a vintage sailboat and would like to spend more time sailing in the Oslo fjord (that he can see from our office window).

Åsmund has a Master of Science Degree in Physics from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Lars Erik Grønntun

Chief Operating Officer, Chief Marketing Officer

Lars Erik has over 25 years of experience from leading professional services businesses, initially founding the leading Norwegian communications agency Gambit, later acquired by WPP plc, followed by several leadership roles in global consultancy Hill+Knowlton Strategies. He is an internationally respected client counsellor and has advised top executives in companies across a variety of sectors. Lars Erik has received a series of awards and accolades for personal and company achievements during his leadership tenure.

Ken Østreng

Chief Financial Officer

Prior to joining Kahoot!, Ken held CEO and CFO positions in Confirmit AS; a leading SaaS vendor for multi-channel Customer Experience, Employee Engagement, and Market Research solutions. Ken has been CFO in both privately held and publicly listed tech companies.

He has studied management and finance studies at BI Norwegian Business School.

Jostein Håvaldsrud

Chief Technology Officer

Jostein has over 25 years of experience in software engineering including the last 20 years in leadership positions. He joined Kahoot! in 2021 after working in Visma, where he led the engineering and product management of a large portfolio of products across Europe. Jostein started his career as a developer in the Norwegian software company Mamut where he delivered production code for 15 years while also working as CTO. Jostein studied Business Administration at the Norwegian Business School, BI.

Mads Rebsdorf

Chief Revenue Officer

Mads has more than 20 years of experience working in the software industry. Before joining Kahoot! in 2020, he was in Visma for almost 10 years, where he led the effort in building one of the leading Cloud service companies in northern Europe. Mads also brings experience from enterprise sales at Oracle in addition to presales and engineering background. He has a Master in Business Administration & Computer Science from the Copenhagen Business School.

Elizabeth Kleive

Chief Experience Officer

Elizabeth Kleive is the Chief Experience Officer at Kahoot!. In her role, she drives CX strategy to ensure the best and most engaging experiences for our users, as well as commercial strategy and implementation. Elizabeth joined the Kahoot! K!rew as Program Director in 2020 and served as VP of Customer Experience before her current role as CXO. Previously, Elizabeth worked with technology company Visma for 12 years, leading the customer experience and marketing efforts within the Commercial Unit of the organization. She has over 20 years of experience in marketing and customer experience and more than 15 years in the software industry.

Elizabeth holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Marketing and Design from the University of Otago.

Julie Wessel

VP Corporate development

Julie joined the Kahoot! Group in August 2019 to strengthen Kahoot!’s focus on strategy, partnerships and M&A. Previously, she worked in McKinsey & Company as a project manager.

Julie holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA degree from Norwegian School of Economics.

Ranjit Mahida

General Counsel

With nearly 20 years’ experience as a media and technology lawyer in the US and Norway, Ranjit has a broad range of expertise advising companies on commercial agreements, intellectual property, data protection/privacy, M&A/transactional, litigation, marketing, regulatory and employment matters. He has held senior legal roles at publicly-traded technology companies and law firms in San Francisco, New York and Oslo.

Ranjit received his BA from the University of Michigan, JD from Santa Clara University School of Law and holds CIPP/E and CIPM certifications from the IAPP.

Board of directors

Andreas Hansson

Andreas Hansson is the Chairman of the Board at Kahoot!. He is partner in 2^Q Ventures, and served as Managing Director at SB Management until March 2022, having first joined SoftBank Group in 2017. Until August 2020 he was a Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. During his time at SoftBank, he has sourced, executed and managed investments in various technology sectors and served on several boards. Before joining SoftBank, Andreas held multiple positions at Arm Ltd. There he served as a technical adviser to the Executive Vice President and the CTO, leading strategic activities around business development and incubation. Andreas received an MSc in Computer Science and Engineering from Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden. He also holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology.

Joanne Bradford

Joanne has more than 25 years of marketing and operations experience in technology, media and financial services. She has served as an executive at high-growth technology companies, including Yahoo, Pinterest and SoFi, and gained extensive experience in M&As, fundraising and the IPO process. Moreover, Ms. Bradford has served on the executive board in a number of organizations, including Wave, Comscore, anti-poverty charity CARE and currently the Unified Access Management provider OneLogin. Today, Joanne is the President of Honey Science Corporation, an e-commerce technology platform acquired by Paypal in January 2020.

Joanne was featured on the Forbes Top CMO list, Ad Age 100 Most Influential Women in Advertising and received the Bill Gates Chairman’s Award at Microsoft. She is also a founding advisor to Lean In.

Joanne has a Bachelor of Arts in journalism with an emphasis in advertising from San Diego State University and resides in San Francisco, California.

Lori Wright

Lori is an executive with broad leadership experience after two decades of working with SaaS and the technology industry, where she has had a variety of roles spanning from marketing to sales to operations to product management.

Currently, Lori serves as Vice President of Gaming at Microsoft, where she leads global partnerships for the Gaming/Xbox business, a segment that surpassed $5 billion in revenue in FY21 Q2. Prior to her career at Microsoft, she held senior executive positions at BlueJeans Network, a cloud-based video communications services company, TIBCO, a leading global infrastructure and analytics company, Symantec, The Walt Disney Company, PaySys International and Lockheed Martin.

Lori holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration/Finance from the University of Central Florida and resides in Redmond, Washington.

Stefan Blom

Stefan Blom, comes with a background as Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Content Officer of Spotify – a company that has been fully embraced as a leader in its space. As CSO, Stefan was responsible for company operations, corporate strategy, corporate development globally. In his role as CCO at Spotify, he led its global markets, licensing and the company’s content and distribution operations.

Prior to his exciting journey at Spotify, Stefan had more than 15 years of global experience in the tech, music and entertainment industries. While he held multiple international executive positions at EMI Group and Hutchison Telecom, Stefan was focused on transformational changes to strategy and business models. Stefan studied at the Royalty Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

Chris Caulkin

Chris Caulkin is a Managing Director and Head of Technology for EMEA focusing on General Atlantic’s investments in the Technology sector. Throughout his 12 years at GA, Chris has led investments in founder-backed businesses in the ed-tech, health tech, food delivery, data, marketplaces and software industries.

Prior to joining General Atlantic in 2011, Chris was an Analyst and Associate at Warburg Pincus in London for four years where he concentrated on investments in the media, technology and business services sectors. Before Warburg Pincus, Chris was an Associate at The Boston Consulting Group in London where he worked on a range of media, technology and financial services projects.

Chris holds a Masters of Engineering from University of Cambridge, and Masters in Finance from London Business School.

Charlotte Kristiansen

Employee representative

Charlotte joined Kahoot! in November 2020 as the first Customer Success Manager for EMEA/APAC. Today, she works as a Senior Customer Success Manager, driving the onboarding and adoption process for businesses and higher education customers. She is based in Oslo, Norway.

Before joining Kahoot!, Charlotte worked at Microsoft and LinkedIn, based in Dublin, Ireland. She has lived abroad for over 20 years, completing her studies in Spain, France and Scotland. She holds a MSc in Marketing from the University of Edinburgh.

Charlotte joined the board as an employee representative in April 2023

Alexander Remen