Meet the team

Our expertise is built on many years of experience in policy development, data analysis, and evaluation.

Anders Asboe Christensen
DEPUTY DIRECTOR
MSc in Political Science
Anders is an experienced project manager with many years of expertise in leading large-scale analyses, strategy work, and evaluations within the field of business and innovation policy.

Anders advises and assists municipalities, interest organisations, and governmental bodies with in-depth analyses, strategy development, and evaluations of key initiatives. He has supported a significant number of Danish municipalities in developing new business strategies and analysing local development potentials and framework conditions for the business community.

Anders is part of the management team at IRIS Group, where he is responsible for finance and accounting.

Frederik Stewart Gaardboe
DEPUTY DIRECTOR
MSc in Political Science
Frederik is an experienced project manager, analyst, and advisor with in-depth knowledge of business and innovation policy.

Frederik leads complex analyses of knowledge-based innovation, entrepreneurship, and business development for ministries, universities, industry organisations, and foundations. He is particularly focused on business clusters related to energy and environmental technology, the defence industry, life sciences, and new biosolutions.

Frederik is part of the management team at IRIS Group, where he is responsible for recruitment and employee development.

Helle Maiken Fischer
CHIEF CONSULTANT
MSc in Social Sciences
Helle works on analysis and evaluation tasks related to business and innovation promotion.

Helle has strong analytical skills and specialises in analysing business models and identifying potential and barriers for sustainable growth and development in various business segments and among entrepreneurial groups.

Helle primarily works with qualitative methods and is a specialist in analysing and extracting key insights from large and diverse qualitative datasets.

Jens Bjerg
PARTNER & DIRECTOR
MSc in Economics
Jens is an experienced project manager, a methodologically strong analyst, and a skilled communicator.

For many years, Jens has provided top-level consultancy to decision-makers in ministries, agencies, knowledge institutions, municipalities, and private foundations. Jens is an experienced speaker and facilitator of engaging workshops and strategic processes.

Jens is a specialist in designing and leading complex analyses in areas such as sustainable growth and business development, trend and technology analyses, educational analyses, and in-depth evaluations of innovation, education, and business policy instruments. Jens has extensive knowledge of the roles and instruments across all parts of Denmark’s business and innovation support system.

Jens is responsible for the overall management at IRIS Group.

Jens Nyholm
PARTNER
MSc in Economics
Jens is an experienced project manager, a sharp analyst, and a confident communicator and speaker.

Jens has many years of experience providing top-level consultancy to key players in the business and innovation policy field. He has in-depth knowledge of the actors and framework setters in Denmark’s innovation and business support system and deep insight into the tasks carried out by knowledge institutions, ministries, municipalities, business development centres, foundations, and cluster organisations within the overall ecosystem.

Jens is a specialist in designing value-creating analyses and evaluations on topics such as innovation, knowledge collaboration, cluster development, and entrepreneurship.

Marie Gørtz
CONSULTANT
MSc in Economics
Marie is an economic consultant working on analyses related to entrepreneurship and business policy.

Marie primarily works with quantitative tasks and data.

Marie holds a master’s degree in economics (cand.polit.) from the University of Copenhagen and has previously worked for the Confederation of Danish Industry (Dansk Industri) on analyses related to business policy.

Mikkel Dollerup Merved
COMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANT
MSc in Communication
Mikkel works with design and dissemination across IRIS Group’s projects and publications.

He holds a Master’s degree in Strategic Communication and has a background in politics and public administration. Mikkel has solid experience in making complex data and messages easy to understand and presenting them in engaging formats.

He works with both qualitative and quantitative methods and ensures that communication consistently supports IRIS Group’s professional content and strategic direction.

Sigurd Gylstorff
CHIEF CONSULTANT
MSc in Political Science
Sigurd works on analyses and evaluations within the field of research and innovation policy. Sigurd has in-depth knowledge of research policy and universities in Denmark and several other European countries. He has extensive experience in conducting analyses of research strengths and the framework conditions that are crucial for ensuring high research quality.

Sigurd has specialised in quantitative regression analysis, including advanced bibliometric analysis, which he combines with insights from qualitative data sources.

Assjad Naqvi
JUNIOR CONSULTANT
BSc/MSc student in Economics
Assjad is a junior consultant at IRIS Group, working with data collection, validation, and analysis.

Assjad has previously worked on socially relevant analyses in the field of diversity and gender equality at the think tank Equalis and is also involved in the development of BI solutions at Danfoss.

He is currently pursuing his master’s degree in economics at the University of Copenhagen.

Anthony Zhou
INTERN
BSc/MSc student in Social Data Science
Anthony is an intern at IRIS Group, responsible for evaluating and developing approaches and tools within projects.

He has previously worked as a student assistant, investigating illicit maritime networks in the Baltic Sea to assess and inform on the impact of policies. Additionally, he used machine learning and language models to identify and analyze temporal salience within Newfoundland politics.

Anthony is currently in his second year at the University of Copenhagen, pursuing his masters in Social Data Science.

Laurits Harbom Marcussen
INTERN
BSc/MSc student in Political Science
Laurits is an intern at IRIS Group, working on projects involving evaluation designs, approaches, and tools.

He has previously worked with consumption analyses, evaluations, and tenders at the Danish Agency for Governmental Administration. In addition, he has experience working with machine learning and language models at the Danish Working Environment Authority.

Laurits is currently pursuing his master’s degree in Political Science at the University of Copenhagen.

Lau Utoft Madsen
INTERN
BSc/MSc student in Social Data Science
Lau is an intern at IRIS Group, working on evaluating and developing approaches and tools across various projects.

He has previous experience from the Danish Agency for Digital Government and the Danish Business Authority, where he worked on scraping data from Danish companies to investigate user data tracking through cookies. In addition, he has worked at VIVE – The Danish Center for Social Science Research – conducting analyses on registry data within the fields of children and education.

Lau is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Social Data Science at the University of Copenhagen.

Meet the team

Contact us for more information

Our analyses and consultancy are built on experience and dedication