Finishing high school I started out as a riding instructor and adventure enthusiast. Years at Helsinki university in the second half of the 80’s turned me into a biochemist of health (minor in animal physiology) with a deep fascination for viruses and antibiotic resistance of bacteria. But I had even greater passion for social neurosciences and the role of the mind and personal history / brain and body chemistry in learning, and interactions between people and people and other social animals. As social neurosciences and the concept of social emotional learning developed in the 90’s, I taught at school teens who were struggling to make sense of themselves, others, and life in general. I needed deeper understanding of behavioral and emotional problems, the impact of stress on learning, and tools to help them before they would totally sidetrack from the society and life they wanted for themselves as adults. That is how the first model of EASEL® was born.

Working with “difficult” kids as a licensed teacher but with special interest in social neurosciences, alternative education methods and developing experiential social emotional learning, my world view was maybe a bit wider than “normal”. I soon realize that children’s emotional and behavioral problems are usually a healthy reaction to problems in their most important relationships : to Self and with parents. Problems with teachers and learning were just a secondary challenge caused by our attempts at school to demand kids Self-management before developing Self-awareness and giving help in emotion regulation, and our inability as adults to offer in the classroom relationships and care to compensate for what was lacking at home.

For best results, I needed to work with the adults around them and help them integrate remedial / therapeutic elements into the kids’ daily lives at school and home. Consequently, I studied a two-year-coaching degree at Tampere University, and recently completed a total of five years of studying solution-focused individual and family psychotherapy at Helsinki Psychotherapy Institute. Over the past 15 years I have learned that, wether I work with kids at school or adults in the corporate world, fundamentally the problems always stem from the same questions “who am I and what happens when I interact with others?”. As Henry Stack Sullivan puts it, people’s problems are ultimately always related to relationships and the anxiety caused by trying to adjust to them.

Looking back, I seem to like to return to three areas. As a 18-year-old I taught riding and trained horses in UK, since mid 90’s I have had my own stables. I started in research at Helsinki university, veterinary department, and accomplished 4 scientific publications and 5 abstracts before having my first child. Now (after raising three children) I am back into research at Jyväskylä university, department of psychology collecting data for quantitative efficacy studies on EASEL®. I taught at-risk teens in late 90’s and developed the first model of EASEL. Now I have been back in the school world for a couple of years teaching at-risk teens again and, some 15 years later, I am fine-tuning EASEL to the social emotional learning needs of today’s kids and teachers.

Over the years, since 2005, I have trained with my team close to 200 EASEL®Facilitators and talked about EASEL® and how to apply its principles in peoples’ own work to thousands more in Finland and abroad in conventions, seminars, schools and university lectures, workshops, staff development days etc. My work has taken me also to some rather unusual places and challenges, such as running an international equestrian centre in Beijing as chief instructor and staff trainer for four years, and training social emotional leadership skills with the help of actors and horses to two groups of leaders at the Commission of European Union. In addition to coaching and training professionals in fields like special education and foster care, I have coached countless groups of equestrian and Green Care entrepreneurs, HR people and e.g. IT team leaders. I work equally hard to help families at severe risk of needing to place own child in professional care due to the child’s behavioral and emotional turmoil , and couples fighting to stay together and find a way back to each other.

Every client, every teacher and supervisor I have had, every colleague I have ever worked with, my loved ones and all the tame and wild animals that have been part of my life, have expanded my understanding being human.
I honestly think that I have the world’s best job and hope ET will be able to answer to your needs!