The people behind Paskaia
Paskaia runs on its own field team — no partner organisations between us and the communities.
On the ground
Our team in La Mosquitia leads the day-to-day work: the brigades, the nurseries, the monitoring, and the relationships that make all of it possible. Paskaia runs on its own field team, with an office on the ground in Puerto Lempira. The people behind it split their time between Honduras and Sweden, but the work happens in La Mosquitia, every season.
Across two countries
Team Leader & Technician · La Mosquitia
Coordinator · La Mosquitia & Sweden
Team member · La Mosquitia
Forest Engineer · La Mosquitia
Creative & Partnership Lead · Sweden
Co-founder & CEO · Sweden
Professor in Sustainable Development · Sweden
Team member · Sweden
The board
Lars has spent over 30 years in senior media and publishing roles, the last 15 as CEO and chairman, at companies including Sydsvenska Dagbladet, IDG and Bonnier Magazines, leading several major transformation projects through the industry's rapid change. He has chaired and served on numerous boards in Sweden and abroad, and holds degrees in engineering physics and telecommunications from Linköping University and Aston University.
Magnus is a Swedish forester with decades of experience on forestry and rural-development projects around the world, including Mozambique, Senegal, Namibia, Ethiopia and Honduras, in roles with SIDA, FAO, Afrikagrupperna, the World Bank and SLU. He has worked in Honduras for several years as CEO of Visión Forestal and Ecoforest, and is a partner and CEO of Skogsvision AB, which develops sustainable timber production, starting in Honduras.
Neil is a professor in sustainable development with more than 30 years' experience as a researcher, practitioner, facilitator and consultant across Australia, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Mekong region and Europe. In recent years his work has focused on generating ecosystem services in farming and forestry. He holds professorships at Uppsala University's Swedish International Centre of Education for Sustainable Development and at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia, and earned his PhD at SLU.
Hilda was born and raised on the island of Roatán off Honduras's Caribbean coast, and grew up close to the sea and its coral reefs, where she trained as a diving instructor. She moved to Sweden in 2013 and has been part of Skogsvision's forestry work in Honduras since 2015. She also helps Silverspoon recover sunken timber in La Mosquitia, and co-owns and runs a small hotel on Roatán.
Fredrik has lived and worked across the former Soviet states since 1988. After a short spell at Tetra Pak, he built the cosmetics company Oriflame into one of the region's best-known brands through the 1990s, then started a venture capital firm in the 2000s, backing around a dozen entrepreneurs who wanted to bring Nordic corporate culture into their businesses. It was in those years that Paskaia's founder, Magnus Bergström, turned to his childhood friend for advice on investing in Honduras. That led to a joint venture in precious hardwood plantations in 2005, the beginning of Paskaia. Since 2016 Fredrik has led Östkontoret, an association of major Swedish companies working to deepen public and private cooperation in the markets east of the EU, with a focus since 2022 on supporting Ukraine.
Oscar has long experience in agriculture and forestry, in Sweden and abroad, and has done a great deal of voluntary work for a range of organisations. He is a partner in Ekman & Co and in Skogsvision, the reforestation venture in Honduras. He holds a BSc in Business Administration from the Stockholm School of Economics (1975) and trained at the Army Interpreter School. Earlier in his career he was a product manager at Procter & Gamble in Venezuela and an executive assistant at Swedish Match, before becoming an entrepreneur in forestry, agriculture and real estate. He has served on the boards of Carnegie, Ekman & Co, Sigtunastiftelsen and the Ekman foundations, and chairs Linköping Tennis Club.