Heads of University Management & Administration Network in Europe

Annual Conference Speakers

Diversity and Inclusion: fostering institutional happiness and preventing harassment

Professor Evelyn Welch

Provost and Senior Vice President for Arts & Sciences, King’s College London

Professor Welch is Provost and Senior Vice President for Arts & Sciences responsible for the Faculties of Arts & Humanities, Business, Law, Natural & Mathematical Sciences, Social Sciences & Public Policy. She graduated from Harvard University with a BA in Renaissance History and Literature and received her PhD from the Warburg Institute, University of London. She has taught at the Universities of Essex, Birkbeck, Sussex (where she was the PVC Teaching & Learning) and Queen Mary, University of London, where she served as Dean of Arts and then as Vice-Principal for Research and International Affairs.

Professor Welch has led a range of major research programmes including The Material Renaissance which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Getty Foundation and Beyond Text: Performances, Sounds, Images, Objects, a £5.5 million AHRC strategic research programme which ran from 2005-2012. She now leads the Wellcome Trust funded research project, Renaissance Skin.

Nannette Ripmeester

Director – Expertise in Labour Mobility (ELM)

Nannette Ripmeester is director of Expertise in Labour Mobility (ELM). She holds an MA in European Studies from the University of Amsterdam and has worked for 7 years at the European Commission in Brussels. ELM is specialized in customizing solutions for international labour mobility, working with large corporate clients and higher education institutions across the globe. With its tdouble-sided knowledge on what makes people internationally employable, ELM regularly advises governments – from Canada to Sweden – on how to further increase the connection between recent graduates and their future job opportunities.

Next to her role for ELM,Nannette heads the European Office for i-graduate –responsible for the International Student Barometer (ISB) in continental Europe and Canada. More recently, she has become involved in the educational gaming app CareerProfessor.works, bridging education to the world of work. Together with her team Nannette works under the motto of Making Mobility Work and with over 25 years of advising employers, universities and governments on graduate mobility, Nannette is one of Europe’s leading experts on mobility for study and work.

Dr. Olajumoke Okoya

Senior Lecturer, University of East London

Jummy is an International Consultant and Speaker on Organisational & leadership Development, Wellness & Resilience and positive psychology coaching.

She is also a highly experienced Educator, Trainer and Researcher within the public and private sectors with more than two decades of experience. Jummy holds a PhD in Human Resource Management and Entrepreneurship, is Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Chartered academic member of the CIPD.

As an Equality and Diversity (E&D) expert she leads on developing E&D strategy and develops programmes to improve gender parity, inclusive workplace and the monitoring E&D data. She was instrumental (in a major UK University) in launching of an internal staff network for women as a support system and a vehicle for developing a female talent pipeline to encourage more women into leadership positions growing that network to 350 members in one year.

Anna Hynynen

University Diversity Officer, Aalto University

Anna works as a Diversity & Inclusion Officer for Aalto University in Finland. Her earlier background is in HRD roles in Aalto University, where she has had responsibility of talent acquisition and employer brand development. Prior to this, she worked as an executive search consultant. While driving diversity and inclusion work at Aalto, she is also PhD student at Aalto University School of Business, Department of Management studies. Her research interests include HRM, diversity and inclusion, and societal impact of employees in higher education and other knowledge-intensive organizations.

Anna is the Diversity Officer at Aalto University; working towards an equal, inclusive and diverse university.

Professor Pat O’Connor

Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Limerick

Professor Pat O’Connor, with a PhD from the University of London, is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Limerick and Visiting Professor, Geary Institute, University College Dublin. She is a sociologist whose current focus is on gender equality in higher education: particularly leadership, excellence, micropolitics, gender-based violence and policy.

Her roughly 120 publications include seven books and over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles. She was a member of the National Review on Gender, Equality in Irish Higher Education Institutions (2016) and was involved in FESTA (2012-2017) and WHEM. She is currently on the Advisory Boards of TARGET, CHANGE and NORDICORE.

She held visiting professorships at London, Aveiro, Linkoping, Deakin and Melbourne. She was editor of a Special Issue on Gender and Leadership (2018) and co- edited one on Creating Change: Gender, Leadership and Higher Education (2020). She is co-editing Gender and Power in Higher Education: Where to Now? (2021) with Kate White for Palgrave Macmillan.

Anneli Karlstedt

Head of Inclusion & Diversity at Nokia

Anneli Karlstedt is the Head of Inclusion & Diversity and Culture Transformation Program at Nokia since November 2018

For many years, she worked as Employee and Change Communications Director in Nokia’s handset business during uptake of Windows Phones and the divestment of the business to Microsoft.

Before stepping into her current role in HR, she gained some experiences in the area of leadership development, culture transformation and people integration after the acquisition of AlcatelLucent.

Seeing diversified teams come together to ideate, cocreate and progress is her dream. She believes that bringing diverse people together with different characteristics and backgrounds, but also experience, expertise and cognitively diverse capabilities will make Nokia even better.

She works hard to create a more consciously inclusive culture at Nokia. She is happy to have the full commitment and support from Nokia’s CEO and President Pekka Lundmark and the Nokia Global Leadership Team.

Nokia’s inclusion agenda 2020 consists among other things of Nokia’s inclusion survey; influencing managers’ and employees’ mindset and providing them tools to mitigate bias; inclusive attraction & hiring activities; keeping the unexplained pay gap closed; strengthening the pipeline of women leaders; development of inclusive leadership practices and creation of discussion modules to increase the team inclusiveness across Nokia.

Marianna Bom

Chief Financial Officer, Aalto University

Marianna Bom is the Chief Financial Officer of Aalto University, responsible for the university financial management, campus and real estate development as well as administration of the group companies owned by the university.

Prior to joining Aalto University, she held several senior financial executive positions in the corporate sector; She holds M. Sc. (Econ) from Helsinki School of Economics.

She is passionate about developing the university leadership and administration, bringing the best practices from the corporate sector to Aalto University, without sacrificing the unique traditions of the three historic institutions that formed the university in 2010.

Ian Creagh

Strategy Consultant, HUMANE

After serving 10 years as King’s College London’s Senior Vice-president Operations & College Secretary, Ian now holds a portfolio of roles including Strategy Consultant for HUMANE.  Prior to King’s, he held similar chief operating officer roles at City University London and before that, the University of Adelaide.  The first part of his career was in the Australian Public Service where he rose early on to become a member of the Senior Executive Service.  

Ian is also an experienced non-executive having served on the Board of King’s Health Partners, the Council of Governors of an NHS Foundation Trust, and the audit committee of the British Academy. He is currently an independent non-executive member of BPP University’s Academic Council.

Susi Poli

Project Manager, Climate-KIC Education Programme, University of Bologna

Susi has more than 20 years’ experience working as a professional manager in European universities. She currently works at the University of Bologna. She holds an MBA and professional doctorate in HE management, from UCL’s Institute of Education.

In addition to her managerial responsibilities, since 2008 Susi has been an active researcher. Her current research interests include professional staff and their blended linguistic and other identities, research management and women in higher education leadership. Her most recent chapters in various books include: ‘Navigating cultures and roles during a professional doctorate’ published in ‘Postgraduate studies in the UK: surviving and succeeding’, 2017; and several chapters in ‘Research Management – Europe and Beyond’, 2017, published by Elsevier.

Susi is a committed and active participant in European higher education networks including the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators, the Society for Research into Higher Education in the UK, and HUMANE.

Tiina Kosunen

Head of International Affairs, Conferences and Events, University of Helsinki

Tiina is the Head of Development, International Affairs, Conferences and Events at the University of Helsinki. She has a varied background and expertise in international human resources management, internationalisation strategy, processes and implementation, change facilitation and change management, service design, coaching and training and event management.

Her passion is to act as an excellent development partner. She works closely and intensively with actors at the University of Helsinki, as well as others located in other institutions, in order to create practical solutions for the benefit of her clients, these being the University’s researchers, teachers and students. An experienced and enthusiastic development and management professional, Tiina’s background is deeply rooted in collaborating with people, building high performing teams and delivering results for her clients.

Prior to her role as Head of Development, International Affairs, Conferences and Events, she held several positions within the University of Helsinki, ranging from creating and implementing new services, through to building digital applications.

Esa Hämälaïnen

Director of Administration, University of Helsinki and Chair, HUMANE

Esa Hämäläinen holds the position of Director of Administration at the University of Helsinki since 2011. He serves as the Secretary General of the Helsinki University Board and is a Executive Team member of both the University and University Group. He is in charge of Helsinki University Services, consolidated administrative services at central and local level. He has a 30 year experience of university administration and university-related business. Prior to the current position he has worked in leadership and management positions at two art universities and also at at the University of Helsinki. Esa is Master of Social Sciences from Helsinki. His expertise cover higher education, research and employer policy, higher education steering, public and private sector governance, professionalisation of services, corporate services, organisational transformations.

Throughout his career Esa has been internationally active, having been earlier in his career a member of the EAIR and EARMA and the steering group of the HUMANE Winter School Alumni Network. For six years he was actively involved in the governing of IMHE at the OECD both as the Finnish University Delegate and the member of IMHE Bureau. For ten years he has served as an internationalisation expert for the German Rectors’ Conference. In HUMANE Esa took part in the Winter School in 2002, and he has been a full member since 2008 and on the Executive committee since 2012.