Board members of the HUMLOG Institute

Here you can get acquainted with the HUMLOG Institutes Board of Directors

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Hannu Kari

Chairman of the board

Professor, Research Director National Defence University

Hannu received his Doctor of Science (in Technology) degree in 1997 in Computer Science from Helsinki University of Technology. He has been qualified for a professor positions twice at Helsinki University of Technology and once at Helsinki University. In addition, he holds two titles of Docent on the areas of “Networking technology” and “Wireless Internet” at Aalto University, in Finland. Hannu has been working as a professor and a research director at National Defence University (NDU) since 2007. Before that he worked as a professor, head of laboratory and director of research institute at Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) over nine years. He also has various experiences in companies, such as Nokia. His areas of expertise are strategic leadership, cyber security and technology expertise, innovation process and protecting intellectual property rights (he is an inventor in 30+ patents), academic and scientific quality control and management.

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Gyöngyi Kovács

Vice Chairman of the board

Erkko Professor in Humanitarian Logistics, Hanken

Gyöngyi is a founder of the HUMLOG Institute, of which she was the director from 2008 to 2014. Her research areas are humanitarian logistics & supply chain management, disaster relief, disaster management, and preparedness, development aid, sustainable supply chain management, industrial ecology, corporate responsibility, research approaches in logistics, and gender mainstreaming. She is the founding editor of the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management.

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Ari Mäntyvaara

Head of Logistics, Finnish Red Cross

Ari has been working for the Red Cross since 2005. He used to work for several years as Regional Logistics Coordinator for the International Federation of Red Cross / Red Croissant in Dubai. For more than 10 years, he is taking part in short term Red Cross missions in the emergency operations in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Iraq, Philippines, Jordan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Haiti, Ethiopia, Uganda, Lebanon and USA. At Red Cross in Finland since 2008, he is among others managing Emergency Response Units (ERU) build up, Finnish Red Cross warehousing and transportation.

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Maria Katajisto

Senior Advisor, National Emergency Supply Agency

Maria works as a senior advisor at the Operations Division of National Emergency Supply Agency (NESA) in Helsinki. Her role focuses on comprehensive security, material preparedness, societal resilience building, security of supply and critical infrastructure protection. Previously Maria has worked for the United Nations (OCHA, WFP and UNICEF), Directorate- General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO), the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland (MFA), The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (RCRC) and several NGOs in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East in the fields of humanitarian assistance and coordination, emergency preparedness and response and disaster risk reduction.

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Graham Heaslip

Professor in Supply Chain Management and Social Responsibility, Hanken

Graham is professor and Head of the School of Business in Galway Mayo Institute of Technology. Prior to entering academia in 2004 he spent fourteen years working in the Irish Defence Forces, as well as spending time seconded to Humanitarian agencies in a logistical capacity. His research interests are broadly in the intersections between global logistics / supply chain management and economic, organisational and management development.

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Outi Nietola

Business Continuity Manager, National Emergency Supply Agency

Outi started to work for NESA in January 2021. Her responsibilities include logistics related security of supply and preparedness, logistics risk management and reliability and resilience of transport and logistics systems. Before NESA, Outi worked several years as Logistics Manager for Finnish Forest Industries, and before that as Logistics Consultant for WSP and Pöyry (currently Afry), as Research Scientist for VTT. She also has background as Civil Servant for Finnish National Transport Agency and Finnish National Road Administration.

As regards to the security of supply in logistics, the key issues are the functionality of maritime transport chain and transport infrastructure, the critical logistics services of society, support for the logistics of the military, as well as the prioritization of logistics services between the military and the rest of society in a crisis situation.

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Pia Polsa

Associate Professor, Hanken School of Economics

Currently an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Hanken, Pia Polsa has previously worked for Fudan University, Nankai University and Hult International Business School in Shanghai.Her current research interests are poverty, service and relationship marketing at non-profit settings like health care in developing countries, international marketing channels, and cross-cultural methodology. Additionally, her research includes grocery retailing and consumer behaviour in China and sustainable poverty alleviating business models in India.She has published in journals such as Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Macromarketing, Journal of Services Marketing, Supply Chain Management, among others.Her work has also appeared in practitioner-oriented journals like Talouselämä.

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Daniel Ekwall

Lecturer, Hanken & Senior Lecturer, University of Borås

Daniel Ekwall (Ph.D) is Professor in logistics at the University of Borås, Associate Professor in Supply chain management at Hanken Swedish business school in Helsinki and also Associate Professor in Supply Chain Security at the Turku School of Economics. Daniel is also the former head of global security at DB Schenker. He has published articles in leading academic journals. . Daniel is currently doing research in logistics security, textile management and supply chain management.

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Soili Paananen

Researcher, Finnish National Defence University

Soili Paananen is Associate Professor of Crisis Management at the Department of Leadership and Military Pedagogy, National Defence University. She holds a PhD degree on adult and continuing education. Her current research interests include complexity in crisis management and sociomateriality in knowledge construction.