1959 births

Cato Hamre Andersen (born 10 June 1959) is a Norwegian former ice hockey player. He was born in Oslo. He played for the Norwegian national ice hockey team at the 1984 Winter Olympics.

Ricardo Semler (born 1959) is the CEO and majority owner of Semco Partners, a Brazilian company best known for its radical form of industrial democracy and corporate re-engineering. Under his ownership, revenue has grown from 4 million US dollars in 1982 to 212 million US dollars in 2003 and his business management policies have attracted widespread interest around the world. Time featured him in its Global 100 young leaders profile series published in 1994 while the World Economic Forum also nominated him. The Wall Street Journal America Economia, The Wall Street Journal's Latin American magazine, named him Latin American Businessman of the Year in 1990 and he was named Brazilian Businessman in the year 1990 and 1992. Virando a Própria Mesa ("Turning Your Own Table"), his first book, became the best-selling non-fiction book in the history of Brazil. He has since written two books in English on the transformation of Semco and workplace re-engineering: Maverick, an English version of "Turning Your Own Table" published in 1993 and an international bestseller, and The Seven-Day Weekend in 2003.

Hilde Heltberg (30 September 1959 – 4 September 2011) was a Norwegian singer, guitarist and songwriter, born in Oslo, Norway.

Elin Rosseland (born 5 April 1959 in Norway) is a singer, bandleader, and composer who studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music and is known from collaborations with Vigleik Storaas, Johannes Eick, Sidsel Endresen, Eldbjørg Raknes, Christian Wallumrød, and Johannes Eick.

Clare Rewcastle Brown (born 20 June 1959) is a British environmental and anti-corruption activist, author, blogger and advocate journalist. Born in the former British Crown Colony of Sarawak (now part of Malaysia), she is the founder and operator of the Sarawak Report blog and pirate radio station Radio Free Sarawak which are openly critical of the Barisan Nasional-led state and federal governments of Sarawak and Malaysia. In 2017, her blog Sarawak Report gained wide recognition for its original and early exposure of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad scandal.

Roger Agnelli (May 3, 1959 – March 19, 2016) was a Brazilian Investment banker, entrepreneur and corporate leader. He ran one of the largest mining companies in the world, Vale SA, and in 2013 was voted by Harvard Business Review as the world’s fourth best-performing chief executive officer behind Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com and Yun Jong-Yong of Samsung. His clashes with Brazil's ruling Workers Party leadership, that began with the Financial crisis of 2007–08 and his firing of 2,000 workers, led to his ouster from Vale SA at the government's request in 2011. On March 19, 2016, he was killed, along with his wife, son, and daughter (and three others) when their plane crashed in São Paulo, Brazil.

Henrik Ruben Genz (born 7 November 1959 in Gram, Denmark) is a Danish film director.
Before becoming involved with film, Genz attended Designskolen Kolding, where he studied graphic design, after giving up on an earlier dream of being a painter. While there, he did some work with video, and a chance meeting with director Arne Bro encouraged him to pursue film as a career. Genz was then accepted into the National Film School of Denmark at the age of 31, graduating after completing the well-regarded short film Cross Roads (Danish title: Omveje, Detours) in 1995.Genz's next work, the short film Theis and Nico (Danish title: Bror, min bror, Brother, my brother), released in 1999, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. He then became involved with the Dogme 95 movement, but was unable to produce any quality work after six months of effort. Speaking later about his difficulty in trying to work under the Dogme restrictions, he described himself as a "visual director" and Dogme as a movement where "the camera follows the [actors] and choice means nothing".In 2003, Genz released his first feature film, an adaptation of the children's book Someone like Hodder (Danish title: En som Hodder) by popular writer Bjarne Reuter. He followed it in 2005 with Chinaman (Danish title: Kinamand), a romantic comedy about a man who takes a foreign wife in an arranged marriage so that she can obtain permission for residency, and then falls in love with her.Genz returned to his roots in 2008, adapting (with Dunja Gry Jensen) a novel by fellow Gram native Erling Jepsen into the film Terribly Happy. In their youths, Genz and Jepsen had been childhood acquaintances who lived across the street from one another. It won numerous awards, including the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

Marcelo Rubens Paiva (born 1959) is a Brazilian writer born in São Paulo, Brazil. He is the son of Rubens Paiva, who disappeared during Brazil's military dictatorship in 1971.

Arthur Rosenblat Nestrovski (born December 26, 1959) is a Brazilian composer, guitarist, literary and musical critic, writer and editor. He was artistic director of the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra (Osesp) from 2010 to 2022; and artistic director of the Campos do Jordão Festival from 2012 to 2022.

Bjørn Ousland (born 14 May 1959) is a Norwegian illustrator, children's writer and comics writer. His breakthrough was the album series Solruns saga from 1988 to 1993. Among his later albums are Mumle Gåsegg from 1999, Soria Moria slott from 2000, and Grimsborken from 2002, all adapted from Norwegian fairy tales. He was awarded the Brage Prize (open class) in 2007, jointly with Jon Ewo.