During his diplomatic career, Aleksei Samosuev has served in various tasks in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus, mainly in the area of development policy with Russia, the CIS Countries and Eurasian Integration. Also he has worked as chief Counsellor for External Policy in the Administration of the President of the Republic of Belarus, has experience with the EU.

In October 2018 Aleksei Samosuev was appointed as Ambassador of Belarus in Finland.

Zhanna Sartbayeva is the Ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan to Finland. She has a long career in the Diplomatic service, she has also worked as Adviser to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan. Before being stationed in Finland earlier this year, she headed the International department, Staff of the Senate of the Parliament.

Vidar Karlsson is Senior Manager, Trans-Atlantic and Short Sea, at Eimskip Iceland. Eimskip is a leading transportation company in the North Atlantic with connections to international markets and is specialized in worldwide freight forwarding services, with the vision of providing excellence in transportation solutions and services.

Peter Nyman is a well-known journalist and media professional. Earlier this year he went back to host one of Finland’s all-time favourite tv shows, Uutisvuoto (Finland’s version of UK’s Have I Got News For You), now at MTV3. Before that he worked for more than eight years as news anchor for the same channel. He is also a sought after moderator at top seminars as well as a popular communications coach.

PhD Olli-Pekka Hilmola is working as a Professor in LUT University, in Kouvola, Finland. He is affiliated with numerous int. journals through editorial boards, including Industrial Management and Data Systems, Decision Support Systems, and Expert Systems with Applications. Dr. Hilmola has published more than 160 refereed journal manuscripts. He has been part of numerous international research projects. In this year he was serving as Visiting Professor in Beijing Jiaotong University.

Hannu Mäkinen is the Director General of Finnish Customs as of 1 May 2019. He has previously held several positions in the Finnish Ministry of Finance, where he most recently worked as Director General of Budget Department for 13 years. Mr Mäkinen is a Licentiate of Laws and a Master of Social Sciences by education.

Staffan Herlin has a long experience in shipping business. Since his Master’s (Econ) degree in 1983 he has been faithful to the leading Finnish shipping company, Finnlines Plc and has held several positions within customer service, operations, profit units, sales and marketing, since 1995 on management level. In the late eighties, he represented the company in one of it’s agencies in Lübeck for almost four years. On top of his daily duties within Finnlines, Staffan Herlin also holds different positions in several commercial and institutional boards and committees.