About Tonje
Tonje Kristiansen is the founder of Her Platform events. Apart from moderating and organizing her series, she works as a writer and documentary maker. In 2020, she launched a podcast in collaboration with the Proper Hotel group in Los Angeles named ‘Proper Talk by Tonje.’ In March 2022 she launched ‘The Her Platform podcast’.
Growing up in Norway, Tonje ’s parents were a director/producer team and she grew up acting in their films and appeared as an actor in several short films, tv productions and feature films throughout her teens. She worked as a fashion model in Paris and New York and was educated as an actor at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York. She then went on to study film and television at Westerdal’s School of Communication in Oslo. Tonje has worked as a journalist for various magazines and periodicals including ELLE and ACNE paper. In 2005, she made her directorial debut with the award-winning documentary short, Kjell, then followed up with the documentary, Love Lessons in 2008. Tonje is currently developing a new documentary with the working title “America letters”.
She resides in Venice, California with her two children.
“When I started the Her Platform conversations in 2018, I was motivated by all the women I had met along the way, in particular, when life took unexpected turns. Other women’s experiences and support helped me better understand and accept the nonlinearities of life. While life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards, finding inspiration in how different women navigate their life and to create a space for that to be shared has been my driving force. To illuminate different experiences but still find identification within them. I think identification is what we look for always.”
– Tonje
