MEET MAGNUS ZAAR: VETERAN IN INTERNATIONAL MEDIA / TV MANAGEMENT

We met first time at the Swedish National Day Celebration last year in Church of Sweden San Francisco. Which he attended with his wife Anna Lekvall, the newly appointed Counsel General of Sweden to San Francisco. We met again a Swedish Delegation led by Crown Princess Victoria attended the festivities in our church at the opening of the new Swedish Consulate. He was also a panelist at the Seminar on Swedish Identity organized by SWEA, SACC and our church last month.

I had many questions and here are his answers.

Both of us come from Skåne, I from Helsingborg and you from a place outside Lund where you finished high school at Polhemsskolan (Natural Sciences). You seem to have had an early attraction to media/journalism.

I started off as a journalist and moved into television via work at Swedish national TV, Sveriges Television. Had a number of positions at SVT, among other head of program development, but also worked as executive producer for several shows, credits include everything from “Tengby talkshow” and “Stereo” with Peter Settman, and of course the very first year of “Expedition Robinson”, which actually was the world’s first version of the international success format, Survivor.

That was one of the most challenging things I have done in my life. Not only was it a new concept produced on a remote, tropical island on the other side of the world, but it was also a concept that was so heavily debated and criticized in Sweden when it was first broadcast. Everyone was against it at first, but the concept was just too strong and at the end of first season it had already turned into a success and a must see. But it was for sure a challenging experience.

 
After that, a number of years on the private, production side of the television business working as CEO of Baluba Television (Peter Settman’s production house) and as CEO of Kamera Interactive during the IT boom, with offices in five countries, and in executive roles of both Strix Televison and Silverback Productions and for some time also as residential entrepreneur in London with the Skype founders’ vent cap company Atomico.

After that I got the chance to head up Aftonbladet’s tv expansion, Aftonbladet led to the well-known The Telegraph in London, parallel to the start of our own ad agency.

When and where did you meet your wife, Anna?

Anna Lekvall, my wife (for 25 years), is a diplomat at Utrikesdepartementet, I met Anna, already in the late 1990s when she was posted at the Swedish mission to the UN in New York. She is currently the Swedish Counsel General to San Francisco. Her most recent appointment was Swedish Counsel General to Mumbai. Prior to India she also had a posting in Uganda. We have two sons, now 18 and 20 years old.

You spent a few years together in Kampala, Uganda, the beautiful garden city I visited in 1968 when I as a young medical student visited East Africa and worked a summer at a mission hospital in Tanzania on the other side of Lake Victoria. Tell us about your own time in Uganda.

Uganda was a fantastic experience. We truly loved Africa and enjoyed Kampala. I produced a documentary about aids for NGO Plan International, but spent most time working with Uganda Wildlife Authority, creating a tv concept based on the conservation projects of the mountain gorillas in Bwindi, the impenetrable forest on the borders between Uganda, Rwanda, and DR Congo. A fantastic project and UWA is a great organization and, happy to say, today things have moved in the right direction for the endangered mountain gorillas. The mountain gorilla is a threatened species facing extinction. Uganda has over half of the world’s mountain gorilla population, found on the Virunga Mountains slopes in Mgahinga National Park and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. But the IUCN Red List brings some hope for the Mountain Gorilla, which has improved in status from “Critically Endangered” to “Endangered” thanks to collaborative conservation efforts across country boundaries and positive engagement from communities in the area.

In 2017 you and your family moved to Mumbai, India, where your wife was appointed Consul General of Sweden. You took up studies at the Yoga Institute in Mumbai and became a certified yoga teacher. How has this changed your own life?

When we moved to India, for me everything changed. 35 years in international media management – then a switch and a move to India. In Mumbai one thing led to another and I went deep into yoga. I became a yoga teacher and studied yoga psychology and started to write a book on meditation. I have just finished it and it sits in pre-production in India for the time being. It’s based on conversations with my guru in India and on my own experiences. Based on this I now offer meditation courses – both one-on-one and for groups. Who knows, maybe I can be of help even here in San Francisco, my new hometown since half a year. Maybe we should start one at the Swedish church?

What can we do as a spiritual community do to help members of our Swedish and Scandinavian colonies find the inner balance? How can we collaborate?

I also for a couple of years do counselling, via a concept called Inner Balance Coaching, based on yoga psychology, (no, you as a counselee don’t need to know anything about yoga), helping individuals in Sweden, India, Europe, and US to find inner balance. We all strive for balance within, but it’s not always easy to achieve. Sometimes you need a bit of help to find that inner balance, that calmness. It all started when I was offered an opportunity to go through the therapy myself. I realized it was different, there was change, it was a brilliant way of handling stress, anxiety, and worries. Things that we all from time to time is limited by and suffers from. It’s a well-working, non-intrusive conversational therapy concept, which I’ve done for couple of years now and I do it in both English and Swedish. When it comes to expats, Swedish is often a preferred language, not the least with teenagers. I would be extremely happy if I could be of any help. It’s not necessarily a long process… It’s done via zoom or in person if you like, and I would really encourage anyone who feels stressed out or anxious to reach out. For myself, it made all the difference when I myself went through the process in Mumbai.

Both of us have an interest in Longevity, how can we promote healthy living?

I am currently also combining yogic wisdom with scientific research from behavioral science in a (still early stage) longevity project called Plus10. It’s basically about psychology-based, scientifically proven areas that can influence your life span, areas that you yourself can manage. If any readers would be interested in a longer life, I am actually looking for people from 50 and up, who would like to be early adopters. It’s all about finding motivation for change in a certain number of areas – and to get the support needed. It’s done as conversational coaching, like the inner balance coaching that I do, but where you yourself decide on how deep you want to go, how big changes you are open for. There are quite a number of factors that we can influence when it comes to living longer. But it’s of course not only about living longer, it’s about living longer, healthier.” Currently The Plus10 project is in early-stage financing and development. “But what better place than in healthy San Francisco to start a project like that?”
 
If you want to reach out to Magnus Zaar regarding Inner Balance Coaching or for taking part in the Plus 10 longevity-project – send an email to magnus.zaar@zaarcommunication.com