• Juho Säkkinen, Global Studies alumnus, former civilian serviceman with the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and student on the master’s programme in Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research at Tampere University (Tampere, Finland)

Juho Säkkinen earned his degree in Global Studies at UPF (class of 2019), and his time in Barcelona left a mark on him. Although he was born in Finland, he arrived in 2016 from Benalmádena (Malaga), in Andalusia, where he had lived since 2004. There, he completed upper secondary school and earned a vocational school certificate in Business and Marketing and an associate’s degree in International Trade, before moving to Catalonia to enrol at UPF. ‘My memories of the university are entirely positive: I learnt a lot, I saw new things, I met a lot of interesting and ambitious people, and I was afforded excellent opportunities for personal growth. I am proud to have studied at UPF’, he says.

After his time in Barcelona, he worked for half a year in Vienna, in the staff development unit of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). He then moved to Helsinki to do his country’s civilian service, which finished last July: for a year, he was posted with the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, where he provided support for the Ambassador for Human Rights and Democracy. ‘I helped him organize events and meetings and prepare informational material. I also drafted “talking points” for diplomats and reports on human rights in different contexts’, he explains.

In the coming years, he wants to find economic stability and a job that makes him happy, preferably in the field of international security. ‘I want to be able to help people and have a positive impact on the world’, he says. To advance towards this goal, this year he enrolled on the master’s programme in Peace, Meditation and Conflict Research at Tampere University (Finland).

“I am in a fortunate position in that the world is open to me and I have opportunities to move within it”

Juho is optimistic about the future. He does not see himself living in Barcelona in the short term, because he thinks that there are not many jobs in his field, but as his plans are uncertain, he acknowledges that you can ‘never say never’. ‘I am in a fortunate position in that the world is open to me and I have opportunities to move within it. I have a positive outlook for the future, even though it is full of challenges, uncertainty and conflicts, made worse by climate change and Covid-19. But I know there are many opportunities to help, grow and contribute to the world. We cannot give up’, he says.

Studying at UPF gave him a strong foundation, which has been very helpful in enabling him to work at the United Nations or at his country’s Foreign Affairs Ministry. ‘You need to have a more global vision, you need to be comfortable interacting with people from different cultures and with different specializations’, he says. In this regard, he thinks that the required exchange he did as part of the Global Studies programme (in his case, at Hitosubashi University in Japan) was important to learn about new cultures and prepare him to work at international organizations.

Photo gallery

Juho Säkkinen in Helsinki, and in the last photo, at Tampere University, where he is currently studying a master's degree​