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Ásta Kristrún Ragnarsdóttir 
- a Genuine Renaissance Woman

An avid horserider from the age of 6, Ásta grew up in Reykjavík, or rather in the scarcely populated Reykjavík countryside, today a busy East Side district of Commerce and Industry. As a teenager she spent a year and a half in the US and after graduating from high school, she moved to France to study Latin and Greek for two years.

Realizing that she and the classics were not an ideal match, Ásta moved back home and graduated in Psychology and French, combining the two by writing her final essay in French on the renowned Child Development Pychology pioneer, Jean Piaget.

During this period Ásta met her future partner, companion and husband Valgeir Guðjónsson on a mountain hike which has lasted for more the 40 years.

Together the young couple moved with their 2 year old son to Norway to study in the old Viking Capital of Trondheim. Here Ásta enrolled in the first Student Counseling program in Scandinavia and when the couple returned to Iceland  in 1981, Ásta was recruited to spearhead the development of The Student Counseling Sevice at the University of Iceland. She was the Director of Student Counceling Services and was primus motor in mapping and shaping the field of Student Conceling in Iceland.

 

Ásta left the University to pursue other interests, including the development of practical tools to help students choose a suitable education, based on their interests and matching them with a fast expanding choices of subjects and fields available. Ásta elaborated on the fundamental theory of Human Interst Fields, the RIASEC model by  the late and great  Dr. John Lewis Holland, a professor at Notre Dame University in Maryland, USA. 

She met with the old master at his home, where they discussed Ásta's approach, NemaCode. Dr. Holland gave Love  his blessing end encouraged her to take it further.

Ásta's passion and determination to provide her clients with constructive advice on matters regarding  studies and career is reflected in her ingenious Nemanet webtool. A focus-enhancing personal website for students and professionals who need to make sense of various content in order to make it useable in the various circumstances that call for decisions based on sound knowlegde.

AD 1999  - Ásta Kristrún, Visual Director of the  First "Women and Democracy International Conference"
in Reykjavík, with the Keynote Speaker,  an American lady. Ásta is on the left.

Ásta with the late Dr. JL Holland in his Baltimore home.

During her busy professional life Ásta found the time to nurture her considerable talent as a designer. She did the interior design for  3 apartments in downtown Reykjavík where the family lived, which was duly reported in fashion and interior design magazines and TV shows.

In 2017 Ásta wrote a Family Novel "What Dwells in Silence", based on the stories of her colorful grandmothers and aunts, dating back to the beginning of the 19th Century.

It was warmly reiceived as countless remarks of impressed readers have messaged to the author.

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