Alumni Interview

Magazine Team

Maria Serodio Local Group Porto

ALUMNI INTERVIEW ...Teemu Metsola and Alina Sidbrant about their personal ESTIEM stories.

Your name:

Teemu Metsola

Your Local Group:

Lappeenranta

Year of graduation:

keep a clean and organized inbox, up to the bigger and project management. ESTIEM also played a 2018

On a more deeper, personal level, ESTIEM helped personal weaknesses, and ultimately played a big such as learning in my first Council Meeting that

Your current job:

Team Lead & Consultant

Your current living place:

Helsinki capital area

Tell us about your career until now:

I started my professional career at a large Finnish manufacturing company called Wärtsilä, working for a bit under half a year in digital marketing operations. I then joined my current employer Biit as a junior consultant, where I started out working in various IT implementation and digitalization messed up the balance on our metrocards the present at the event, I was also strongly urged to

projects roughly four years ago. I actually only graduated two years ago, as finishing my master’s thesis took a bit longer than anticipated. Nowadays I split my work time 50/50 between being a consultant/project manager and leading a team of consultants.

What are your plans for the future?

I do not have any fixed plans for the future. There are so many interesting opportunities out there, and with the world changing at an ever-increasing speed, any plans for the future would surely change over time. I am keeping an open mind and am excited to see what the future brings along.

Which impact did ESTIEM have on your career?

ESTIEM taught me many practical skills, from the topics such as the importance of networking, intercultural awareness, leadership experience big role in me securing my first job opportunities at the very beginning of my career. It also opened my eyes to the many career paths and possibilities out there in the world.

me clarify what my personal values are and what I aspire to do in the future, strengthen some of my part in shaping me to be the person I am today.

Tell us your most memorable ESTIEM story.

There are so many good ones to choose from, those water bottles at the Serbian international night table are not actually filled with water, or going to a bus stop to catch Wi-Fi from a FlixBus to download the event’s survival guide so you know where your accommodation is.

If I had to pick just one, it would have to be my first ESTIEM event, Europe3D Portugal, hosted by Local Groups Porto and Coimbra. The event was an eye-opener, full of great memories, new friendships, and one long walk across Porto to get to our port wine tasting activity – we had somehow night before. Thanks to the many active ESTIEMers small things such as time management or how to

join the upcoming Council Meeting in Warsaw. I knew nothing about central ESTIEM at the time and I did not manage to join that Council Meeting, but curiosity ultimately led me to get active in my local group and join the one after that, in Belgrade. The rest, as they say, is history.

What are, in your opinion, the biggest changes that ESTIEM has faced in the past 30 years?

I would say the advancement of technology, especially the internet, has had an immense impact on ESTIEM over the years. ESTIEM in the past had played a leading role in connecting IEM students in Europe before the internet and its data were easily accessible to everyone. Initiatives such as the ESTIEM Magazine and ESTIEM Student Guide were significant projects at the time of their conceptions, wide audience affordably and in the highest quality

bringing IEM students in Europe together for the first time to network, collaborate and exchange ideas. With the advancements in technology and the fondest memories of my life so far. My biggest Most importantly, no matter what you end up

connectivity, the bar has been raised for ESTIEM. The needs and expectations from key stakeholders such as prospective new ESTIEMers are higher and different from the past. There is also more competition from the outside, as ESTIEM is not the only entity that caters to the interests and needs of European IEM students.

The possibilities, however, are also even greater than before.

ESTIEM has continued being a driver for innovation and an incubator for new initiatives. Some great project – bringing some of the most sought-after education within the IEM domain accessible to a – and the IEM Curricula project – gathering study and course data from all over Europe into one platform to answer the age old question of what IEM is, and which direction it could and should be moving to. As an alumnus it is truly an honour to see the newest generations of ESTIEMers continuing to spearhead innovation in Europe through such activities.

What is your advice to current ESTIEMers?

Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone! ESTIEM is a great place to get the most out of your time as a student. I learned many skills during my ESTIEM years that help me succeed in my work life, which many of my peers do not necessarily have. I have also made lifelong friends, gathered loads of unmatched experiences, and gained some of regret is not getting active in ESTIEM earlier in my studies, so be sure to get involved! examples recently include the Lean Six Sigma

doing, have fun and enjoy your study time to the fullest!

Your name: Alina Sidbrant

Your Local Group:

Saint-Petersburg

Another result of our collaboration with Arekibo is an interview with our dear alumni member, Alina Sidbrant.

Alina is an Alumna from Local Group Heaven (Local Group Saint-Petersburg). She was active in the network from 2012 to 2016. Started as the Head of Human Resources in the Local Group board, then became ESTIEM Training Committee leader in 2014/2015, and the very first ESTIEM Ambassador in 2015/2016. Through her ESTIEM years she has also been part of Local Group Gothenburg and took an active role in reactivation of Local Group Tallinn.

Even with a major in International Law, from St Petersburg State University of Engineering and who always felt interest in problem solving and management. Right now, she is living in Dublin, Ireland, and working within the digital innovation field.

We have asked Alina about her journey in ESTIEM, motivation to do the White Paper, future collaborations and many other things.

If this got you curious, check out the interview on the link down below! My own Training Committee Coordination meeting in Gdansk. The event combined 2 in 1 - regular coordination meeting and Trainers practice camp, so we enjoyed training from salsa dancing to bee keeping and time management. Council Meeting Istanbul - a 5 star event with 1M euro budget and a fantastic GA hall. Also, interrupting the presentation of TIMES leader with “My little pony” song. New Years Activity week in Saint-Petersburg, where we had a bathtub full of Russian salad. Council meeting Vienna - another beautiful General Assembly hall, and 12 special

Economics, she was always an ESTIEMer at heart delegates (“Local Group Externals”), representing 12 ESTIEM partner organisations and my Vice President crying. Our Training Committee chats, when first in the network we had a problem of Skype being unable to host so many participants. Council Meeting Baltics, which we organised in Riga together with 6 Baltics Local Groups. Stealing the Council Meeting Chairperson’s gavel for 5 times.

What did you learn in ESTIEM that helped you during your professional life?

Three of the most important skills that I developed in ESTIEM are: leadership, communication and solution-orientation. Leading the community of 300 trainers and training enthusiasts, I learned that it is all about the people. This means that together with leading by example doing the actual work, a good leader is inspiring and motivating for the team. She cares about each member of the team, and tries to create a safe and supportive environment, where all their initiatives are supported and mistakes are allowed.

Looking back at your journey as an ESTIEMer, what is the best memory you have from your time in the network?

That is a difficult question, because I have so many great memories from my time in ESTIEM, so I decided to cover a good few briefly. Just some of the things that came to my mind are:

My first ESTIEM event - and the first ever Training Committee meeting in Warsaw, suddenly was discussing the committee budget among the other things. Another important skill that I apply at my job every day is communication. When I coordinated the relationships with 80+ partner organisations, I noticed that some of these were working out really well, while others showed no progress at all. The difference between those was in open, transparent and timely communication. Open means covering any type of issue without abandoning the sensitive topics. Transparent is honest. Timely means

where I had no idea what was going on but frequent communication, that respects deadlines and on demand follow up.

ESTIEMers are encouraged to always try to find creative solutions to the problems, so at some point I stopped seeing problems as negative, but some of the creative assets for our blog or social

more as fun challenges that I need to overcome. For example, when on the first day of the Council Meeting Riga the hostel that was supposed to fit 200 Council Meeting participants had burned down, with no other accommodation facilities available in town, we found an empty building and bought 200 IKEA beds to host the delegates. We divided our team, one was building the beds on the spot as the participants were arriving, while the other team was distracting them at the local bar. It worked out well, so since then I try to bring this attitude to every challenge I face at work.

What was the motivation to approach ESTIEM to do the white paper? Brand awareness and lead generation campaigns

I now work at Arekibo - an Irish digital platform agency, where we design and build digital platforms to underpin global businesses. We work with Ireland’s largest companies, such as airports, banks, consultancy and law firms, hospitals, universities and governmental institutions, helping them to create their digital presence. Digital is our passion, and it is constantly changing, so we are always trying to keep us and our clients up to date with the latest digital innovations, research work, such as survey and white papers are all parts of that ambition. Definitely, yes. I believe such collaborations

Web security, web privacy, cookies usage, personalisation of the web - all are the trending topics on the Global Digital agenda at the moment. These issues have also become the focus on the European Digital arena. Furthermore, in Ireland the digital experience managers were encouraged to pay special attention to cookie management, as Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) has published the compliance regulation, coming into force 05.10.2020. In order to help our clients plan their digital strategy, we decided to do our own research around these topics and we needed a trusted partner to help us with data collection. Because of my ESTIEM background, the idea of partnering with the organisation came into my head naturally, so in August this year we joined forces and sampled 180 millennials to find out their views and opinions on security, privacy, tracking, Arekibo is a quite big agency. How would you describe a regular day at the office?

I work at Arekibo as a Marketing Innovation Analyst. A regular day at Arekibo for me is a combination of individual and team based work. On average I have 3 to 4 meetings a day. During these calls I can be interviewing our clients for the blog article, catching up on the joint marketing initiatives with one of our technology partners, discussing our marketing strategy and activities together with my colleague Jennifer, or solving some strategic issues with the CEO and the team. The rest of the time is used to follow-up on these calls, work on the action points to move the things forward, or designing media.

are another big part of our marketing work. We try to hold about 4 campaigns per quarter, so planning, facilitating and evaluating these campaigns take up a lot of my time. Occasionally, I get to do some client work too. Recently I have been working on auditing the digital strategy for a large corporate.

Can we expect to see more projects like this between ESTIEM & Arekibo? Do you see this type of collaboration as a big part of the future of Education in ESTIEM?

personalisation and trust on the web. between the student organisations and the corporates are beneficial for both. It is a win-win, because the students get to work with the industry and through the process can learn some about the professional business world, while companies can get fresh and unbiased opinions and ideas from students. Our whole team at Arekibo are delighted with the joint white paper we published in September together with ESTIEM. We look forward to new exciting projects in the future!

Thank you Alina for these wise words! We hope ESTIEMers will find them useful and get inspired as much as we did in this collaboration.