Biographies

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Anita Straujuma

M.Sc.Comp., MBA, executive director of Riga Technical University Alumni Association, Latvia

 

Anita has vast experience serving for 23 years as active volunteer in nonprofit academic organization “Imeria”. In her professional life after 10 years working in management positions in IT industry she moved to her real passion – management of nonprofit organizations. Anita has 5 years’ experience serving as executive director in Riga Technical University Alumni association. Under her leadership and generous support of alumni volunteers the organization has grown in numbers from 63 founders to 790 members actively involving alumni in various events, creating new traditions and inspiring alumni for a lifelong collaboration with the university. Currently Anita is also a PhD student with particular interest in knowledge management, organizational culture and innovations actively promoting university – industry cooperation and alumni role in this process.

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Barbro Kolbjørnsrud
Head of Alumni Relations, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway

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Barbro joined BI in 2001 and have extensive experience within executive and customized programs as program coordinator, team leader and director of studies. She has been the Head of Alumni Relations since 2006 and the BI Alumni network has grown in to a full scale program with sustainable national and international communities and with a broad engagement platform for alumni. She has previously worked within the retail industry in various companies. Her professional interest is long term strategic planning, community development, enhancing alumni engagement and cultivation of external relations. Barbro holds a Bachelor and Executive Master degree from BI within marketing, strategy, internationalization and management. She is a long time CASE volunteer and is the current chair for the annual CASE Nordic Summit. 
 

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Claire Kilner 
Deputy Director (Alumni Relations), The University of Manchester, UK

Claire Kilner has worked in higher education Advancement since 1996 at the Universities of Sheffield, Nottingham and Manchester, starting in public relations before moving into alumni relations. She has been at The University of Manchester for five years and is Deputy Director in the Division of Development and Alumni Relations.  She leads the Alumni Relations team of 17 people and has responsibility for the strategic development of alumni relations programming for over 420,000 alumni based in over 200 countries and territories. 
She has particular responsibility for and interest in communications, international alumni relations, senior alumni engagement, volunteering, alumni involvement in enhancing student employability & experience and the role of the University in the continuing career development of alumni. 
Claire is a double alumna from the University of Sheffield with a BSc in Anatomy and Cell Biology and a MA in Journalism Studies.

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Corey Morris
Chief Alumni Evangelist, Aarhus BSS (Aarhus University), Denmark

Corey has worked in higher education for the last 10 years, cultivating and maintaining lifelong relationships with alumni at Aarhus University - while also helping a handful of other Nordic institutions kick start their alumni programmes. He strongly advocates the need for greater passion, appreciation and urgency for alumni relations and fundraising across the entire Nordic region. Corey's expertise runs the gamut from communicating with purpose and leveraging your brand to engineering spectacular events and igniting student, faculty and alumni engagement.

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Diana Aguiar Vieira 

Pro-Rector for Employability & Alumni Relations at Polytechnic of Porto and Vice-Dean at ISCAP (Porto Accountancy and Business School of Polytechnic of Porto), Portugal

Diana Aguiar Vieira, PhD in Psychology, teaches in the area of social and behavioral sciences and she has practical experience in the development of career, alumni and coaching services in higher education institutions. Her research interests include alumni relations, employability, coaching, higher education, soft skills and self-efficacy.  Diana has been passionately dedicated to enhancing graduates’ employability for almost two decades. Her PhD thesis was dedicated to university-to-work transition and received the prize “Prémio Agostinho Roseta” from the Portuguese Ministry of Work and Social Solidarity. In the last years she has been developing an employability integrated approach linked to Alumni Relations. Diana’s personal mission is to help people reach their highest potential and well-being by translating psychological science for the general public. Her personal site (www.beyou-bemore.com) aims to facilitate this purpose.

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Fernando Soares

Corporate & Alumni Relations Director, Nova School of Business and Economics, Portugal

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Fernando Soares started his career in London as Investment Consultant for Mercer Investments and then moved to Lisbon office to set up an Investment Performance Team that worked from Lisbon to different countries in Europe within Mercer Investments. After 4 years at Mercer Investments he has moved to Angola, to set up an Asset Management firm.

Since April 2013 he moved to Nova SBE to set up the Corporate & Alumni Relations Department. This office is responsible for alumni relations, corporate relations, corporate development and fund raising.

Fernando holds an Undergraduate degree in Economics from Nova SBE and a MSc in Economics & Finance from Durham University United Kingdom. At Nova SBE he was President of the Students’ Union.

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John Arboleda
Partner at NOYO, Spain 

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John Arboleda is a Partner at NOYO (NotOnYourOwn), a highered consultancy that applies service design to help institutions enhance and innovate stakeholder engagement. John is a higher education professional with 20 years of international experience in Higher education management, program design and management, student and alumni engagement, admissions and recruitment, careers services.  He served on the CASE European Annual Conference Planning Committee where he Co-Chaired the Alumni Relations Track, and currently is a member of the UCLA Alumni Association Board of Directors.  Apart from living in Europe since 2004, John is a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and is a graduate of the Coro Fellows Program in Leadership and Public Affairs (USA).
 

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Leasa Weimer  
Knowledge Development Adviser at European Association for International Education, Finland 

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Leasa Weimer is the Knowledge Development Adviser for the European Association for International Education and a visiting researcher at the University of Jyväskylä. She has a PhD from the University of Georgia where she was awarded a Fulbright grant to research the introduction of tuition fees in Finland. Leasa also holds an Erasmus Mundus joint master’s degree from universities in: Oslo (Norway), Tampere (Finland), and Aveiro (Portugal). She is the former president of the Erasmus Mundus Students and Alumni Association and currently serves on the Erasmus+ Students and Alumni Association board and the Fulbright Centre-Finland alumni board. She has authored several papers, book chapters, and policy papers, as well as presented, on the topics of international alumni relations, joint degrees, and international student mobility.

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Lina Slavickaite 

Head of Career and Education Centre at Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania

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Lina Slavickaite is a Head of Career and Education Centre of Kaunas University of Technology. She received her Master degree of Knowledge and Innovation Management at Kaunas University of Technology. Lina has also finished Continuing Education “Adult Learning Principles” program at George Brown College in Toronto, Canada. She has gained an international experience by running and participating at projects in Canada, USA, United Kingdom, Turkey, etc. Currently Lina is working as an expert by building new study programs for Kaunas University of Technology. Her current focus of work in Career and Education Centre is on: Students’ Employability; Career Management and Counseling; Career monitoring; Talent Management; Mentoring; Collaboration with Business and Alumni network.
Lina is a freelance consultant in the field of personal development, Youth inclusion.

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Pedro Dominguinhos

President at Polytechnic of Setúbal, Portugal

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Pedro Dominguinhos is President at Polytechnic of Setúbal. He has a PhD in Management and is Professor in the area of Business Sciences.

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Polly Akhurst 
Senior Community Engagement Officer, UWC International, UK

Polly has a passion for connecting people and making big ideas happen. At UWC, a global movement of 17 schools and colleges, Polly’s role focuses on enabling a community of over 60,000 alumni, staff, volunteers and parents to pursue UWC’s unique mission of creating peace and a sustainable future through education. She devises, implements and manages global engagement tools and programmes, including an annual ‘UWC Day’, UWC-wide events and support of UWC groups around the world and the ‘UWC Hub’, an online platform and mobile app that brings the community together online. 
Polly is also the Co-founder of Talk to me, an initiative that encourages strangers to talk to each other, and is also working on a project to set up a hybrid online-offline high school education for refugees. She has a background in consumer PR, and is an alumna of the University of Oxford and UWC Atlantic College.  

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Richard Gillingwater

Independent Brand and Engagement Consultant, Oxford, UK

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Richard Gillingwater is a strategic and creative thinker – an ideas man who has spent over 30 years helping commercial and educational organisations find better ways to tell their story, reveal their authentic voice and build a deeper more emotional connection with employees, customers, students and alumni.

It is this deeper emotional connection and authenticity, he believes, that will underpin and drive the future value of any organisation and its brand. The key to building these deep emotional connections will be initiatives in which brands invite consumers to create meaningful experiences together – creating collaborative communities built on a network – either real or virtual. The creation of experiences and networks where people and brands work together and facilitate each other will deliver value back into their community and drive sustainable innovation and economic growth.

Richard has advised a variety of educational clients on on a range of topics including branding, marketing, the student experience, alumni relationships and fundraising. Richard was a consultant on the HFCE funded Distinct Project (distinctiveness within higher education). He has been a keynote speaker at Radboud University in Nijmegan on personal branding and also talked at CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) for many years on topics such as Creativity, Storytelling and the Power of Emotions. He has been a regular lecturer at Kingston University and the Institute of Technology Tralee. In 2015 he wrote the lead article for TES on rebranding Further Education.

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Sandra Rincón

Founding Partner of Emojiee, Netherlands

With 25 years of experience in international education, I’ve been building global communities by engaging leaders in universities, companies & governmental organizations. I’ve developed international strategies and programs on alumni & stakeholder engagement, intercultural communication, international talent mobility & recruitment. This has given me the opportunity to live and work in the Netherlands, USA, Spain and Colombia. I am currently completing a PhD in Management focused on international alumni relations at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. My passion is to empower people to contribute positively to their communities.
 

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Teele Arak 
Senior specialist for marketing at the University of Tartu, Estonia

 

Her background spans the fields of higher education and political marketing, campaign planning, alumni relations and events and sports facilities' management. Her specific interest is in advancing the field of marketing through personalisation and alumni relations. In 2016 her alumni marketing campaign won the Marketing Idea of the Year award for telling alumni stories through rap. She organised the largest alumni reunion of the University of Tartu in 2016, has initiated the UT alumni network and is currently working on implementing a fundraising system at the University of Tartu. As a former member of the Estonian national basketball team she also has a keen interest in sports and sports facilities’ management. She is one of the instigators of building an innovative multifunctional mechanical arena to Tartu that seats over 5000 people. Teele Arak is a graduate of Loughborough University (BA, International Relations, 1st Hons Degree) and University of Tartu (MA, International Relations, cum laude).