Sarah Wills Carlsson: Finally a purposeful a game for team development
- February 18, 2024
As a trainer, I've historically struggled with incorporating the fun element into training. Personally, I often found traditional games to be trivial and nonsensical. However, when I discovered Miki Island, my excitement soared. Finally, I found a game that not only brings enjoyment but also imparts valuable lessons. I enthusiastically joined early on because it addresses a gap in my training repertoire, offering a meaningful blend of entertainment and the incorporation of crucial theories on team roles and dynamics.
Sarah Wills Carlsson
CEO, Nspir A.B.
Sarah has formal education in electrical engineering at Northwestern (BSEE 1996) and engineering management at Stanford (MS-MS&E 2000) and spent her first twenty-two years in the automotive industry with the same company, on a senior management career trajectory.
While she loved engineering and the automotive industry as a whole, she realized that senior management roles didn’t capture her passion.
In 2015, she decided to start her own company with the goal of focusing her energy on these aspects she loves most.
The first years of Nspir were consulting with a single customer in Gothenburg Sweden, where Sarah worked in project and engineering management roles to build, recruit, and develop an organization and together with her Chinese and international colleagues. As part of and in addition to her consulting work, she has also developed and led training in individual and team development, combining her experience in industry, university education, and additional certifications in Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Belbin Team Roles, the Integrated Model for Group Development (IMGD) and Group Development Questionnaire (GDQ), and Miki Island, experiential learning according to IMGD.
After relocating to Columbia, SC, USA due to her husband’s international assignment, she is expanding her training globally to include training, workshops, and individual coaching for mental and physical well-being. As she believes in a systems approach to problem solving, in 2017, she added customized nutritional coaching through the German Metabolic Balance program in order and works with partners in fitness and nutrition improvement.
Having previously lived inSweden and Germany, Sarah loves the Scandinavian life with sailing and skiing, and the Scandinavian concept of “mys (Swedish) or hygge (Danish)”, which involves bad weather, a warm fire, and peaceful home activities. Having worked regularly with more than ten countries and travelled to more than 30, Sarah loves to travel and especially would like to engage in professional activities with interesting people and in interesting places.
She especially enjoys bringing understanding to diverse teams, helping individuals overcome imposter syndrome to bring their best selves into their work, and helping individuals and companies avoid making the many mistakes she has learned through doing and studying.
In a new special project built on collaboration with her sister and several university sorority sisters, Sarah is extending the psychology and theory that she uses in her training to children’s books.
With an interest both in environmental and economic sustainability, Sarah designs and creates original products for her brand SEW & Knot Co. While this activity is currently on hold, some of her products are available for sale in Lysekil at Outdoor West.
Finally, photography has been a passion of hers since childhood. Her pictures of her travels around the world can be seen on Instagram @nspirphotography and are also available for purchase in Lysekil at the book store or Outdoor West, or online via Picfair.
