Halla Tómasdóttir was just 11 years old when Vigdís Finnbogadóttir became Iceland’s head of state – and in the process the world’s first democratically elected female president.
This, she said, “planted a seed” that would influence her career as an entrepreneur and her view on female leadership, ultimately leading her to follow in Vigdís’s footsteps to become the second woman in the role.
While she did not know then she would run for office herself, growing up with a female president had a profound impact on her. “Ever since then she was a role model for me and all of us who thankfully grew up during her presidency of 16 years,” Halla, who took office last week, said in an interview with the Guardian.
She was inspired by her approach to equality, nature, culture and international relations. “It planted a seed in me that influenced how I think about leadership and I believe she led the way for Iceland’s leadership in gender equality,” she said.
Having previously run for president, narrowly missing out to her predecessor Guðni Jóhannesson, who stood down after eight years in office, she said her inauguration on Thursday was “truly magical”.
The feminist entrepreneur, who started an investment fund with the musician Björk at the height of Iceland’s 2008 financial crisis, was chief executive of Richard Branson’s non-profit The B Team, and has given a Ted talk on applying “feminine values” to finance, won more than 34% of the vote in Iceland’s June elections, beating the former prime minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir. She campaigned on issues including artificial intelligence, tourism and the impact of social media on young people’s mental health.
“One of the things I’m the proudest of when it comes to the campaign this spring was that young people really showed up and turned out and we had 80% voter participation in Iceland, that’s beautiful,” she said. “I’m proud of the fact that 75% of the vote went to female candidates. Iceland is sending a strong democratic message with both those facts.”
However, she is joining a shrinking number of female leaders across the Nordics, which until recently was run by multiple women. Katrín, who stood down as Iceland’s prime minister to run for president, was replaced by a man, while Sweden and Finland recently replaced the former prime ministers Magdalena Andersson and Sanna Marin with men. Earlier this year, Denmark’s long-serving Queen, Margrethe II, stood down to make way for her son, King Frederik X.
Despite this, Halla said, gender balance was “built into our DNA in the Nordics” and she would do everything she could to be a role model across the region and internationally. She said what was happening was simply a “generational shift”.
“The Nordics are going to continue to show a different school of leadership,” she said, “because we have built gender balance and hopefully will be on the forefront of building greater generational balance of how we lead and how we develop our societies to be more future fit.”
She also plans to bring the “feminine values” that she brought to the world of finance to the role of president. Meanwhile, she believes her husband, Björn Skúlason, will provide a good example of how to be a supportive partner to a successful woman as Iceland’s first man.
“I will continue to push the very philosophy that has characterised everything that I have done, that profit has to be achieved on the back of principles and those principles need to be humane, they need to be about the long-term sustainability of humanity and our social contract,” she said.
“I don’t think I am over-exaggerating when I say that everywhere around the world the social contract is fractured right now. We see division and low trust in all institutions and society everywhere we look.”
Generational and racial inequality were at the centre of the world’s biggest challenges, she said, particularly the climate crisis. “Whatever we look at because if we don’t do better today, our children and grandchildren are facing a much harsher reality than we have enjoyed. So I think about gender, racial and generational inequality and trying to close the gaps in every way we can.”
