The Academic Advisory Council, composed of leading independent experts in education and capacity-building, provides specialized information and opinion to support EduCluster Finland operations and international partnerships.
Dr. Kaj Björk is an economist with extensive experience of development cooperation programs, projects, and business operations across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Specialised in finance management for large-scale budgets he has been involved with leading and managing assignments for the World Bank, European Union, United Nations, and African Development Bank. Key assignments have been in Cambodia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Swaziland, Thailand, and Zambia. One major project has been in provision of finance support and management training leading to overhaul of Zambian education through an economically viable and governance-focussed education sector strategy.
Dr Tajalsir Kardaman is a career guidance expert, with more than 32 years’ experience of teaching in universities and colleges in Sudan and Qatar. His academic background is in cross-cultural management with special focus on application of participative, reflection-in-action, approaches to organisational change, group dynamics and individual development. He is currently instrumental in developing a national approach to developing career guidance in Qatar at the national, sector and institutional levels under the umbrella of the Qatar National Vision 2030. He has been instrumental in helping transition the Qatar Career Fair Center, a member of Qatar Foundation, into a full-fledged Career Development Center. Recently he has established Qatar’s Career Guidance Stakeholder Engagement Platform and contributed to the National Career Guidance Framework and a Qualification Programme for Career Practitioners.
Helena Kasurinen PhD, has specialised in developing advice and counselling services for citizens in educational settings and working life, processes and standards on practitioners competences, alongside quality assurance of career development policy and provision. Having been instrumental in designing solutions at the University of Eastern Finland, Finnish National Agency for Education, and Ministry of Economy and Employment, she has published extensively authoring 35 articles and editing 9 books in this field, and is currently engaged with national and international career guidance initiatives.
Gisella Langé specialises in curriculum development, intercultural education, language learning solutions, and web-based teacher training. Alongside acting as Foreign Languages Inspector with the Italian Ministry of Education, she has extensive experience of working as an expert on European Commission and Council of Europe assignments. Most recently this has involved advising on the 2024 OECD/PISA Foreign Language Assessment Framework design, and Eurydice Key Data on Teaching Languages at School in Europe. She has also been instrumental in the realisation of innovative language learning practices through international project development of early language learning, the European Language Portfolio, and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).
Dr. David Marsh has contributed to educational advancement in Finland over 25 years. He has experience of tasks in six continents, contributed to 170+ publications, presented 180+ keynotes, and received 5 degrees from the United Kingdom, Finland, and Spain. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, London, Honorary Chair in Bilingual Education at the Catholic University of Murcia, Spain, and CEO of MED, Finland. His key current interests are educational change management, CLIL and bilingual education, realising OECD global competences, and adjusting educational practices for digitally astute young people.
Sini Parampota is a career development expert, DEI advocate, researcher, and consultant, sitting on several national and international technical committees and working groups, including the Asia Pacific Career Development Association Board of Directors, and the US National Career Development Association Ethics Committee. Awarded the NCDA Practitioner of the Year 2024 Award, she has a special interest in female empowerment, inclusion of people with disabilities into labor market systems, and inclusive leadership capabilities. She is an alumna of INSEAD and Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education, and currently a doctoral candidate of Social Care, Management and Leadership at Tavistock & Portman, NHS Foundation Trust investigating career as a transitional object and its potential application to create more inclusive workplaces.
Dr. Kari Pitkänen has retired in 2019 from the position of Director of Strategic Planning and Development (also having the title of Professor) which he held at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His academic education is in social sciences with specialisation in population issues, including the role of education in social processes. When taking the position of Director of Education at the University of Jyväskylä (2007-2011) he had had several academic positions at the University of Helsinki since 1974. At the time when he left the University of Helsinki he acted as Professor of Sociology (Population Studies) and as the Head of the Sociology Department. At the University of Jyväskylä he has been the key person in building the University’s renowned student welfare program, Student Life, and has supported the Faculty of Education and Psychology in developing international programs in teacher training and educational leadership as well as in preparing institutional level research grant applications.
Raimo Vuorinen, PhD, has been working as a Project Manager at the Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä. His research interest is on evidence based lifelong guidance policy development and the use of ICT in guidance. Over 30 years he has acted as expert in international working groups with the European Commission, Cedefop, European Training Foundation, ILO, OECD and Unesco as well as in promoting national career development support systems through training and consultation. In 2007-15 he was the Co-ordinator of the European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network, ELGPN , in 2012-19 a Vice President of International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance, IAEVG and 2019-21 the Chair of Board of the International Centre for Career Development and Public Policies, ICCDPP.
Professor Jouni Välijärvi has been Director of the Finnish Institute for Educational Research at the University of Jyväskylä, national project manager of the OECD PISA, and Finland representative at the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. He has acted as expert for the OECD, European Union, and key Finnish administrative and stakeholder organizations including the Ministry of Education, National Board of Education, Finnish Education Evaluation Centre, and the Higher Education Evaluation Committee. His experience includes acting as member or chair for more than 30 expert or advisory groups intended to develop education including pedagogy, curriculum, evaluation, STEM and education systems.