Bo Lidegaard

Bo Lidegaard

Co-Founder and Partner, Kaya Advisory; former Editor Politiken, Copenhagen

Bo Lidegaard, a writer, historian and Co-founder and Partner with Kaya Advisory. Bo was Managing Director with Macro Advisory Partners 2016-21 and Editor-in-Chief of Politiken, the leading Danish daily newspaper from 2011 to 2016. Previously, Dr. Lidegaard has worked as a diplomat, as an foreign policy and national security advisor to succeeding Danish prime ministers. In this capacity he was deeply engaged in preparing The United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen in December 2009 and in international negotiations on climate change and low carbon development strategies. He remains engaged in international efforts to accelerate the transition to low carbon economies. Before joining the Prime Ministers Office, Dr. Lidegaard worked with the Foreign Service. In the late 1980s he was posted to the Danish UN mission in Geneva and after a posting to Paris in the late 1990s he was in 2003 appointed Head of the Middle East and North Africa Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Alongside with his career as a civil servant, Bo Lidegaard has pursued academic research on contemporary history. He has published a number of rewarded volumes on contemporary history and international affairs, establishing him as one of the most read Danish historians. His major works focus on the Danish response to totalitarian ideologies in the 20th century and on the interrelationship between internal welfare and external security. He recently published A Short History of Denmark in the 20th Century introducing the particularities of his native country to an English language audience and in 2013 Countrymen: The untold story of how Denmark’s Jews escaped the Nazis, published in 12 countries.