User:Kari Eielson Mork

Ms. Kari Eielson Mork was born on December 29th, 1958 to Mrs. Eileen Osking Eielson Mork and Mr. Kendal Eugene Mork, near their home-town Hatton, North Dakota.

Her father, now deceased, was a farmer and served in WWII in the US Air Force and was a Prisoner of War in Nazi-occupied Austria. Her mother is a retired home economics teacher who taught at Hatton Public School. Kari is the youngest of three children. Kari attended Hatton Public School from K-through-12 and graduated with honors in 1977. She later attained a Bachelor of Science majoring in Marketing and minoring in Economics from Minnesota State University, Moorhead.

In the 1860’s her ancestors emigrated from Norway and Sweden to North Dakota and she was raised on a farm near Hatton, population 700. As a Norwegian farmer’s daughter, early-on she proved to have a strong work-ethic. Kari worked on her father’s farm from childhood and worked full-time whilst attending school from Junior High School through university graduation. She excelled in sales, becoming Sales Manager at a high-end-clothiers in Fargo.

In 1981, Kari attended Université d'été, Toulon, France. Upon her return from France, during her last year at university, she began her career in the brokerage business as a University Intern at Piper, Jaffray, Hopwood, in Fargo and at the headquarters in Minneapolis, MN. Her interest was piqued by doing point-and-figure charting and acting as an all-arounder.

In 1983, after university graduation she moved to Los Angeles, CA working for a Senior Executive VP as a Sales Assistant at Drexel Burnham Lambert, Century City, Los Angeles, CA.

In 1985 Kari joined Morgan Stanley’s new Los Angeles office as a NASD Licensed Institutional Sales Assistant trading repurchase, commercial debt and governmental agencies.

In 1988, she married a Swiss citizen (in 1991 they were divorced) and moved to Zurich where she worked in institutional trading and management at Goldman Sachs, sales-trading Euro equities, international convertible bonds and Japanese/Swiss Franc warrants.

In 1999, Kari married a Swiss architect (in 2004 they were divorced) and in 2000 gave birth to a daughter, Kara Eileen Mork Kaiser.

Professionally, in Switzerland, Kari is both a PolyReg Licensed Investment Advisor and a FINMA Distributor (Individual) of Foreign Collective Investment Schemes (i.e. offshore mutual funds). Kari is an Executive Director, and Member of the Board, of a Swiss investment company and a Guernsey-based offshore mutual fund. Having worked in the Middle East since 1991, Kari is an expert in Islamic investment product-development, marketing and sales.

Philanthropically, she is focused on the Hatton Eielson Museum and the Native American Sioux Tribe.

In May 2011, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s Tribunal Committee unanimously endorsed Kari after she presented the Chairman, Mr. Charles W. Murphy, with a 1930 photo of Sioux Chiefs with her great-grand-father, Ole Eielson, at the occasion of his son, Carl Ben Eielson’s funeral.

On the eve of 29 December 2011, Kari delivered a donation of $5,000 of goods to the 127 children in protective-social-care. This was the 130th anniversary of Wounded Knee and also Kari’s birthday.

Kari’s great-uncle was Carl Ben Eielson, the first pilot to fly “Over the Top of the World”, the first to land on floating ice, the first to fly air mail to Alaska, the first to fly in the Antarctic. He died in 1929 at age 32 as a hero saving the lives of others in Siberia (http://www.eielson.org).

To learn more please see http://karimork.net