If he wanted to be the first, he is, by plenty.
Eleven months out from election day, international businessman/financial expert Göran Eriksson this morning announced he will compete for one of three available seats on the City Council next April.
He told the newspaper he did not set out to be the first candidate to go public. Logic dictated the timing.
“Since I had made my decision,” he told the newspaper, “and there were enough people among my friends and associates who knew about it, it made sense to officially go out with the news.”
Even at this early date, he has assembled hefty high-profile backing from four members of the City Council, Mayor Mehaul O’Leary, Vice Mayor Andy Weissman, and title-free Jeff Cooper and Jim Clarke. The mayor and vice mayor will be term-limited next year.
As the owner of two businesses, was it a difficult call to run for office for the first time since his university days?
“Yes,” Mr. Eriksson said.
What was the process?
“The most important supporter that I had to convince was my wife (Britta),” he said.
“We had discussions about the time and the commitment for four years that running for and being on the Council would mean.”
For months they talked it over.
Ultimately, the Erikssons concurred that his candidacy “made sense.
“We agreed that we probably could manage that with everything else that we have, including two companies we need to run also.”
A native of Sweden, Mr. Eriksson is president of esi Techtrans, Inc., an international business development consultancy he founded in 1987. He also serves as chairman of the board and CFO for Euro VAT Refund, Inc., the company he co-founded with his wife in 1992. It is a leading VAT financial services corporation specializing in VAT reclaim and management.
Mr. Eriksson likely is the busiest entrepreneur in Culver City.
Widely involved in a broad spectrum of community organizations, Mr. Eriksson lately has taken an increasingly stronger hand in the city’s fiscal affairs. Owing to 30 years of success in global entrepreneurship, he brings acknowledged gravitas to City Hall as the respected chair of the Financial Advisory Committee.
Married for 30 years and the father of two college-age sons, Mr. Eriksson, former chairman of the board of the Chamber of Commerce, is deeply invested in School District affairs as well. Owing to his financial acumen, he is vice chair of the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee, charged with evaluating spending prospects for the $106 million schools improvement bond that easily passed last June.
Mr. Eriksson, a board member of the Chamber of Commerce, is a member of Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), Culver City Amateur Radio Emergency Service (CCARES) and the Exchange Club. He is a graduate of the Citizens Police Academy, and he has coached soccer under the AYSO bannere for several years.
As a point of particular pride linked to his Swedish birthplace, Mr. Eriksson is chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Lund University Foundation, Inc. He raises funds for a project to curate, translate and digitize the Ravensbruck Archive, a rare body of Holocaust survivors’ real time testimony, which now resides at the Lund University Central Library.
Ravensbruck, a concentration camp built solely for women and children, was the only one of its kind. The Archive includes 500 interviews done at Lund of the women of Ravensbruck, among 21,000 who were evacuated to southern Sweden.
