I create effective, engaging and memorable learning experiences for organisations, schools and non-profits. Currently L&D Consultant at AFRY, and writing the book Dare to Facilitate

My name is Jenny, and I create effective, engaging, and memorable learning experiences for organisations, schools, and non-profits.

Blending a background in design with a career in transformative learning, I work with Abracademy as Head of Learning, where we craft unforgettable experiences that grow authentic leaders, inspire extraordinary teams, and unlock creative potential. I also founded and curate Toolbox Toolbox – a global collection of the best business, design, and organisational change toolboxes – designed as a place to explore and spark new ideas.

Beyond this, I run the event series Make Friends Not Contacts, bringing people together to build genuine connections rather than transactional networks. In parallel, I am a professional photographic artist, using the lens to connect with people, spark curiosity, and explore creativity in new dimensions.

And if that’s not enough, I’m also the author and host of Dare to Facilitate, a book and a podcast exploring daring facilitation.

Websites 
— abracademy.com
— studiotheolin.com
— toolboxtoolbox.com
— jennytheolin.com
— daretofacilitate.com

Selected clients:

Orgs — AFRY, Luger, Volvo Cars, ICA, JET Takeaway, European Parliament, Electrolux, Toca Boca, Halebop, Design Sweden, Paulig Food, Santa Maria, Zound Industries, Fat Shark Games, Foodmark, Kopparberg, Adidas, Willys, EA Dice

Schools  — Hyper Island, Berghs, Hertfordshire University, London Met Uni, Nackademin, Shillington, Dynamic Music Group

Non-profits – WaterAid, HM Foundation, Cancer Research UK, McGuire Prorgramme, Battersea Cats & Dogs Home

Featured in  — Creative Boom, Creative Review, The Guardian, BBC World News, BBC Technology, The Independent, Buzzfeed, Wired, Huffington Post, Dagens Nyheter, The Drum, VICE, Wallpaper Magazine, Computer Arts, CAP&Design, Digital Arts Magazine, Design Week, Resumé, Grafik, Creative Bloq

Published in — Tänk Om, Framtidens Professionella Liv 4.0, Startup Guide Stockholm v. 1+2, Work for Money Design for Love, Inside Art Direction, CITIx60 STHLM Guide

Keynotes — Learning Conference, STHLM Xperience, ODA, Zound Industries, Luger Way Out West, Glug, She Says, Creative Mornings, Product Design Meetup, Graphic Design Educators Network, Inhousedagen, Pecha Kucha, Berghs

Awards won — AGDA, DBA Inclusive Design Challenge, DBA Marketing Awards, Best Awards, Carbon not Cars Award, B2B Marketing Awards, Direct Marketing Award

Judging — Swedish Learning Awards, 101 Hack, Visuellt Norwegian National Design & Illustration Awards, DBA Marketing Awards, Kycklingstipendiet, EPI Web Awards, Startup Weekend

👋🏻 Back in BIZNIZ Monday! With working trips to Amsterdam and Berlin planned so far this spring… looking forward!

Ps. Learnings: Rehab is boring. 
Pps. My knee works! 😅

Jenny Theolin

I create effective, engaging and memorable learning experiences for organisations, schools and non-profits 🟡 Fractional Head of Learning at Abracademy 🟣 Author & Podcaster of Dare to Facilitate 🔵 Speaker & Moderator

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First longer crutch-less walk of the year. 🚶‍♀️❄️ After knee operation and the past 10 days of nasty cold, I am out! Stockholm is beautiful today.

Being in the best company, chatting about a favourite subject.
Last year I had the joy of hosting a Game Show with the SessionLab Community and contributing as one of the expert voices to the State of Facilitation 2025 report.

Today, I’m doing something just as nourishing: listening to the experts behind the 2026 edition. 👉 https://lnkd.in/d7ABgfjq

For a little bit anyway; spot my co-worker today! 

And honestly? It feels like coming home.  

A few insights that really stayed with me – and some reflections from the field 

✨ We’re measuring performance, not impact
Reflection helps us improve our craft, but real impact shows up in changed behaviour, new conversations, and braver decisions weeks or months later.

🛠️ Try this: ask participants to write a short 'future headline' describing what changed because of the session – then revisit it together a month later.

✨ Impact depends on what happens before and after
A session isn’t all the work – it’s the interruption, and the real magic lives in the shared agreements and the follow-up.

🛠️ Try this: invite participants to name one intention at the start and turn it into a visible artefact, then return to it at the end to notice what shifted, strengthened, or surprised them.

✨ Evaluation is a process, not a checkbox
If impact is only discussed at the end, we’ve already missed the chance to shape it.

🛠️ Try this: keep a visible 'impact wall' where insights, shifts, and tensions are added throughout the journey – not just at the end.

✨ Experience changes how we understand impact
With time, satisfaction matters less than what actually sticks, ripples, and sustains.

🛠️ Try this: invite participants to send you a voice note weeks later answering one question: “What are you doing differently now?”

✨ The value of facilitation is often lost in translation
We often feel the value instinctively, while clients need language they can carry into their own world.

🛠️ Try this: co-create one metaphor from the session and encourage the team to use it in meetings as a shared shorthand for change.

✨ Final note. Facilitation is choreography across time, not a single performance.

What are your ideas? 

Feeling grateful to be part of a field that keeps asking better questions of itself. Thank you Deborah Rim Moiso and Carrin Robertson 💃🏼!

A different kind of Learning Consultant

From living all over the world, and with nearly two decades experience in the design industry, my unique combination of creative skills and diverse perspectives allow me to design and deliver effective, engaging and memorable learning experiences.

Learning is a journey

I embrace the full spectrum of the learning experience, not just the traditional focus on content and instruction. This includes everything from pre- and post-learning activities, to physical and digital environment, emotions and motivation of learners, and the influence of culture and society.

I work with: 

Learning Strategy – Overarching plan and approach for organising, delivering and evaluating learning initiatives within your organisation.

Learning Experience Design – Effective, engaging and memorable facilitated experience-based learning initiatives. 

Learning Facilitation – Guiding and supporting learners through the experience to help them achieve their goals and objectives.  

Websites 
— studiotheolin.com
— learningsweden.com
— toolboxtoolbox.com
— designeducation.co

Selected clients:

Organisations — AFRY, Luger, Electrolux, Toca Boca, Halebop, Design Sweden, Paulig Food, Santa Maria, Zound Industries, Fat Shark Games, Foodmark, Kopparberg, Adidas, Willys Supermarket, EA Dice

Schools  — Hyper Island, Berghs School of Communication, Hertfordshire University, London Metropolitan University, Nackademin, Shillington College, Dynamic Music Group

Non-profits – WaterAid, HM Foundation, Cancer Research UK, McGuire Prorgramme, Battersea Cats & Dogs Home

Featured in  — Creative Boom, Creative Review, The Guardian, BBC World News, BBC Technology, The Independent, Buzzfeed, Wired, Huffington Post, Dagens Nyheter, The Drum, VICE, Wallpaper Magazine, Computer Arts, CAP&Design, Digital Arts Magazine, Design Week, Resumé, Grafik, Creative Bloq

Published in — Framtidens Professionella Liv 4.0, Startup Guide Stockholm v. 1+2, Work for Money Design for Love, Inside Art Direction, CITIx60 Stockholm Guide

Keynotes — ODA, Zound Industries, Luger Way Out West, Glug, She Says, Creative Mornings, Product Design Meetup, Graphic Design Educators Network, Inhousedagen, Pecha Kucha, Berghs Morning Routine

Awards won — AGDA, Design Business Association Inclusive Design Challenge, DBA Marketing Awards, Best Awards, Carbon not Cars Award, B2B Marketing Awards, Direct Marketing Award

Judging — Swedish Learning Awards, 101 Hack, Visuellt Norweigan National Design & Illustration Awards, DBA Marketing Awards, Kycklingstipendiet, Epi Web Awards, Startup Weekend

This work began while death cleaning after my father’s passing. As I moved through his things, I realised I wasn’t just sorting objects, I was meeting a life. Every kept item held a decision, a moment of care, a memory of what mattered. Grief sharpened my attention. It slowed me down enough to notice.

I have moved across countries and cultures more than fifteen times. Each move asked the same question again and again: what do I carry, and what do I leave behind? Over time, I began to see that these choices were shaping me. The objects I kept became quiet companions, anchoring me through change.

I believe we are all already curators. Each of us carries a personal museum: a living, shifting collection of objects, traces, and imagined things that tell the story of who we have been, and who we are becoming. 

✨ The Museum You Carry ✨ is not fixed. It grows, sheds, and rearranges itself as life unfolds.

As this work deepened, six rooms began to take shape: Collection Room, Transformation Room, Connection Room, Becoming Room, Echo Room, and Imagination Room. They are not rooms you pass through once, but places you return to at different moments in life. I will continue to share them as the practice evolves.

This is becoming more than an idea. It is a practice I want to offer to others – an invitation to pause, to notice, and to honour the stories already living in the ordinary things around us. I call it ✨ Curatology✨ .

Together with John Airaksinen and John & Julius Salong, I am now exploring how this work can be made physical, how it can be walked through, touched, and experienced in his beautiful space. We are calling leaders who understand that objects, stories, and spaces shape how people belong.

What do the objects you carry say about what you value?

#curatology #museumyoucarry #experience #experiencedesign

Can strategy just happen when the idea is good enough?

Spoiler alert: yes, it can.

Yesterday I was invited to John & Julius Salong hosted by John Airaksinen for a session on moving through life beyond goals and strategy – and it felt like quiet validation. One of those moments where something you’ve been doing for years suddenly gets company.

For more than a decade now, my work has often moved me, rather than the other way around.

LOLCat (2014) is still the story that reminds me of this.

It started with a tweet. An idea about doing an exhibition inspired by LOLCat memes. Hundreds of artists wanted to take part or support. Then there was a gallery space, print sponsors - and alcohol sponsors! And just like that, it became an exhibition.

No plan. No strategy. No sense of where it might lead.

And yet I somehow found myself featured as a curator in BBC, The Independent, Wired, BuzzFeed, Fox News (unfortunately 🙈), Huffington Post, Der Standard – and even in Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter. None of it was expected. It just… unfolded.

Listening to Belinda Retourné yesterday, who has worked in remarkably similar ways, was such a relief. A reminder that this way of creating – openly, together, in motion – isn’t chaotic or naïve. It’s just different.

Somehow, I keep finding myself in the right place at the right time. I don’t fully know how – but so far, that’s been my experience.

What I do know is that one of the things I love most is making ideas real with other people. Co-creating from the start. Working closely with the humans that whatever we’re making is actually for.

So maybe this is just a reminder – to myself, and to anyone else who works this way:

You’re not alone.
Show up.
Trust the idea.
And leave room for serendipity.

(Photos from last night below, plus a link to LOLCat The Documentary by Jonathan Nicol in the comments 👇)

Stopping by Designbaren this week felt like a small visit back to the future. It was a reminder of what having design in your backpack gives you: a way of seeing, shaping, and trusting ideas – across ventures, concepts, and entirely new directions.

And it was a joy to meet and talk to fellow creatives who’ve carried their practice into new worlds (like starting restaurants!)

Have you also worked in the design industries and carried your skills elsewhere? Super curious.

…
Thank you Mattias Svensson and the folks at EY Doberman 🫶🏻🥂

🇸🇪👋🏻 Jag har inte sett så många böcker om facilitering på svenska, så jag funderar på att översätta Dare to Facilitate och ge ut den som e-bok.

Jag tror att det är extra viktigt just nu, när många jobbar i förändring och osäkerhet och det krävs mod för att stanna upp, ställa bättre frågor och våga ta de där lite svårare samtalen tillsammans. Samtidigt finns det få resurser om facilitering på svenska, vilket gör att viktig kunskap inte alltid når fram. En svensk version av Dare to Facilitate skulle kunna göra det modet mer tillgängligt i vardagen.

Finns det intresse för det? 🤷🏼‍♀️

www.daretofacilitate.com

I’m starting a series of articles to share the research and thinking behind my work. Here is what I shared as a Post yesterday.

The next one will be about the Collection Room – why we collect, what objects remember for us, and how small things end up carrying so much meaning.

Welcome to the Collection Room.

#Curatology #MuseumYouCarry #Memory #Storytelling #Museums #Collecting #Identity #HumanExperience #Learning #Facilitation #ThingTheory #MemoryofObjects #MaterialCulture

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