Bjarne Tellmann and David Kelly are the two new members of Great Northern Salmon's Board of Directors.
Photo: Great Northern Salmon LinkedIn page.
The Maine-based RAS salmon project, Great Northern Salmon (GNS), announced yesterday the addition of two new members to its Board of Directors following the Annual Shareholders' Meeting held earlier this month.
Tellmann and Kelly join the other three current members of the Board: Great Northern Salmon CEO Marianne Naess; the Board's Chairman and co-owner of GNS's parent company, Xcelerate Aqua, Erik Heim; and William Ginn, who served as Chief Conservation Officer of The Nature Conservancy for several years and also founded NatureVest, The Nature Conservancy's USD 3 billion investment partnership with private capital.
"We are very happy to see that Bjarne Tellmann and David Kelly have chosen to offer their time and unique experience to Great Northern," said Chairman of the Board Erik Heim, commenting on the appointments.
The CEO of FjordStream Advisors GmbH and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, Bjarne Tellmann, is also a former FTSE-20 and FTSE-100 General Counsel with a global career at Haleon, GSK, Pearson, and Coca-Cola, bringing deep experience in M&A and capital markets, as well as leadership from some of the largest corporate transactions in recent European history.
Tellmann has served on multiple Boards worldwide, including Mowi ASA, the world's largest supplier of farmed salmon. In addition, he is a published author on leadership and AI and has received numerous professional honors, including 'General Counsel of the Year' at The British Legal Awards in London (2017) and 'General Counsel of the Year' at the Legal Era Global Achievers Awards in New York (2018).
"Great Northern has combined impressive capabilities in both the U.S. and Norway, which resonates with me personally, given my ties to both countries. Having previously served on the Mowi Board, I'm excited to return to the seafood industry, especially with a company that is so well-positioned in the U.S. market," Tellmann said when commenting on his appointment to the GNS Board of Directors.
In a LinkedIn post announcing his appointment to the Board, Bjarne Tellmann added that GNS is in an exceptional position for growth.
"The company combines world-class expertise with a management team unsurpassed in the U.S. market. By advancing state-of-the-art RAS technology, Great Northern is building the foundation to become a leader in sustainable, land-based salmon production in the U.S.," he wrote.
David Kelly, for his part, was president and CEO of Bluefin Robotics, a provider of autonomous underwater vehicles and marine robotics technology. Later, he served as CEO and Chief Technology Officer at Innovasea for nine years.
The international aquatech firm is one of the companies included in the portfolio of Cuna del Mar, the impact investment fund on whose Board of Directors he has also been a member since May this year.
Under Kelly's leadership, Innovasea grew from a US-based fish farming equipment supplier to a global aquaculture technology leader with offices in Canada, Norway, Chile, Greece, and Australia. As he explained to WeAreAquaculture in an interview for our TalentView series, both he and the company are "all-in on aquaculture."
"I have followed the U.S. segment as CEO in Innovasea for many years – it is time we see some impactful progress in US aquaculture. I believe the Great Northern is in a good position and I look forward to contributing to its development," Kelly stated now.
Moreover, David Kelly is also a member of the Board of Directors of SalmoGen, a US commercial supplier of Atlantic salmon eggs that enables the long-term growth of the Atlantic salmon aquaculture industry in the United States. Founded in late 2022, the company is the result of an investment partnership involving Xcelerate Aqua and Cuna Del Mar, along with other shareholders.
