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Ingunn Geving, Research Scientist at SINTEF Health Research |
This was what the proposer of Ingunn Marie Holmen Geving as recipient of the Work Environment Prize for 2005 wrote in his letter of recommendation to SINTEF’s Work Environment Committee. The committee had no hesitation in accepting the suggestion.
According to the proposer, Holmen Geving, who leads the SINTEF section of Tekna, the Norwegian Society of Chartered Technical and Scientific Professionals, has “the courage to stand up for people who find themselves in a difficult situation, and whom she usually does not know when she takes up their cases”. She has “the honesty to say what she thinks, both to authority, downwards and at her own level”. And she has “the generosity to share her knowledge and assessments, and to give praise where praise is due”.
This year’s prizewinner was born in Alvdal in the County of Hedmark, where she grew up on the family farm as the youngest of four children. She acquired her feeling for social organisations with her mother’s milk.
“My mother and father were both active organisation members. For example, my father was deputy mayor for many years. Being the youngest in the family, with three older brothers,
I also learned to defend myself and to claim my rights,” she says with a smile.
As an eight-year-old she became a junior candidate member of the Norwegian Young Farmers’ Association. She was elected to school councils in primary, secondary and high school, and even while she was studying biophysics and medical technology at NTH (now NTNU), she became a member of what is now Tekna.
“As far as I was concerned it was the obvious thing to do, in view of the solidarity and shared values that union membership implies.”
She has risen through the Tekna hierarchy from being an elected member for her ‘own’ research division, SINTEF Health Research, via membership of Tekna’s negotiating committee at SINTEF, to a place on the board of Tekna’s SINTEF group, which she is currently chairing for a third successive year.
As the proposer’s letter also puts it, she is a candidate for the prize “who may well occasionally be regarded as a nuisance by management, but who unconditionally offers her services when difficult times appear”.
“It’s enough to make you blush,” is Holmen Geving’s own reaction to such claims, but in her next breath she makes it clear that the award gives her a large extra dose of inspiration.
“An elected job like this also gives me a great deal in return. I find it meaningful to work for the good of everyone. It is also both interesting and a matter of self-development to have some influence on SINTEF’s strategic choices.”
