People News
Creandum expands its investment team
A new Partner based in Stockholm and a new Principal based in London
At Creandum, one of our most important roles is supporting the entrepreneurs we work with as best we can. This entails making sure we always have their back — in good times and in bad. In order to truly understand our founders’ challenges, it’s critical that we have a thorough understanding of the operational efforts behind building great companies. That is one of the reasons we are beyond excited to announce two new members to the team: Sabina Wizander and Gemma Bloemen, who will join as Partner and Principal respectively.
Sabina and Gemma both have an outstanding track record when it comes to proving their profound operational expertise: Sabina spent her last four years working at the Creandum funds’ portfolio company Kry that recently surpassed a $2B dollar valuation. At Kry, Sabina held different senior management positions ranging from Director of Business Operations, Chief Commercial Officer, and most recently, Chief Strategy Officer. She joined Kry shortly after spending a couple of years in Creandum’s own team as an Investment Manager from 2015 to 2017. In that time, she worked closely with our General Partner Fredrik Cassel and was heavily involved in Kry’s seed round led by the Creandum funds. Sabina was also part of the Berlin task force established to open up Creandum’s office there.
As the 19th employee at Kry, Sabina played an essential role in scaling the company to become today’s European digital health category leader. Prior to that, she was with McKinsey in San Francisco, supporting some of the large tech companies there. Sabina, who holds a Master’s degree in Engineering, was also part of the core team shaping McKinsey’s view on future technologies together with prominent advisors such as Hal Varian and Eric Schmidt.
Given her history with Creandum, her dynamic and passionate personality, and our conviction that her heart beats for social change, innovation and impact-driven companies, we’re delighted to have her back in the team as Partner. Sabina will be based in Stockholm but will explore different industries all across Europe, like the rest of the team.
Our new Principal, Gemma Bloemen, joins us from Elder, the UK’s leading health tech marketplace. As Chief Operating Officer, Gemma was deeply involved in steering the company’s overall strategy and worked closely together with the CEO on many aspects of the business, including their Series B fundraising process in 2019. Before joining Elder, Gemma was part of scaling Uber during its most formative years growing the local UK team from 20 to 250 people. Prior to that Gemma spent a number of years at McKinsey. Originally from The Netherlands, she has lived on four different continents and holds degrees from Yale and INSEAD.
We’ve got to know Gemma as an extremely ambitious and curious extrovert, who enjoys working with entrepreneurs from different industries. As an angel investor herself, she’s been proactively supporting founding teams, sharing her expertise in operations and people/recruitment, and is no stranger to strategic planning and goal setting. She has a soft spot for marketplaces, digital health, and sustainability, and has always been a champion for diversity and inclusion. At Uber, she co-chaired Women of Uber in 2017, and, along with much else, we are looking forward to seeing her supporting other companies to further their diversity efforts.
The Creandum funds have over many years already invested in a range of companies from the UK ecosystem, such as depop, Tide, Laka, Argent, Dija, YuLife, Osu, and others, and we’re tremendously excited to have Gemma as our first Investment Team hire based in London to further strengthen our activity on the ground. She will be working in close cooperation with the firm’s wider investment advisory team in Creandum’s other key hubs Stockholm, Berlin and San Francisco.
The whole team at Creandum is thrilled to be working with Sabina and Gemma over the coming years in our continued mission to be the premier venture firm for Europe’s most ambitious entrepreneurs.
To both, we wish you a very warm welcome to the #CreandumFamily!
