Ville Ahola, Henna Jyrinki, Ilkka Peura, Petra Kuismanen, Karin Björkstrand

The Finnish Group Study Exchange Team from District 1380 to District 5550 Canada during 6.5. - 2.6.2009, arrive and depart from Winnipeg

Ville Ahola is an IT-system specialist at EPEC Inc. He maintains and develops company network, server and workstation environment. His vocational interests - besides IT technology generally in companies and communities - are virtualization technology, data storing and archiving in companies and communities. Ville's hobbies are Finnish baseball and all kinds of team sports.

Henna Jyrinki is a researcher in Vaasa University and she is finalizing her doctoral research on pet-related consumption. She would like to learn something about marketing & consumer research in Canadian universities as well as Canadian industry related to pets or responsible consumption. Hennas hobbies are dogs: agility-, rescue- etc... and hike in the nature with her five dogs.

Ilkka Peura (team leader) is a retired Finnish Air Force fighter pilot; nowadays a private entrepreneur coaching leadership for executive groups and consulting on aviation and education matters. Ilkka is interested aviation overall and seeing how small size aviation enterprises are making their way in Canada. Leadership education & training overall interest him also a lot. Ilkka's hobbies are hunting (especially moose hunting), fishing and aviation (Paragliding and Powered Paragliding).

Petra Kuismanen teaches business law, financing and entrepreneurship at Finnish Institute for Enterprise Management and also develops enterprises. She would like to learn about entrepreneurship in Canada and especially how entrepreneurship is trained. Petra is also an aerobic instructor who's hobbies are aerobic, show dancing and cross-country skiing (...and all kinds of sports).

Karin Björkstrand is an English and French teacher and a student counselor at Central Ostrobothnia University of applied Sciences. Karin is interested visiting some institutions of higher education, learning about their way to teach English/French as a foreign/second language. Also Canadian culture and business life interests her. Karin's hobbies are sports, literature, culture, travelling and choir quire.

Although we listed a lot of vocational interests, our team's #1 priority is meeting nice people, learning about Canadian culture, beautiful nature & life overall. We are pleased if we can share some info about Finland during our stay.