profile: laura ukkola

Laura Ukkola, FIN
Executive assistant

I am originally an Oulu citizen coming from a town of Kiiminki who chose to study Hospitality Management here in Rovaniemi over three years ago. In addition to the handy bus connection between my original home city and the present one, moving to Rovaniemi was a great idea as the city is large enough to find what I need but small enough where it´s easy to find the relevant networks, even the international ones.

Since I study my Bachelor degree in the polytechnic university of Lapland, everything I have been working on has been very concrete. From the creation of blogposts, articles and social media posts advancing all the way to product designs and working during the event days. Besides attending my school´s lectures, everything I have been learning during school and more has went to mainly assisting on independent student projects inside the student organization InnoBarentsLab. Which, upon joining, has been one of the highlights of my life.

Since 2015 I have been working as a cashier and translator during restaurant days and flea markets, worked on the info desk, acted as a helper on the audiovisual side of seminars, promoted the organization both live and online, made occasional social media posts and helped in the planning and execution of the recent HAGI handicraft workshops. For the end of the year 2017 until now, my main role as part of the InnoBarentsLab has been to assist the project manager in planning and execution of the upcoming Northern Stars Seminar from all aspects.

On my free time, I like to watch different geek event vlogs and movie, book, concept etc. analyses, primarily for my own enjoyment while being simultaneously hopeful the information I get from those I can transcribe to the work too. I have a strong preference for media and art themed events, seeking to hear the stories from artisans and business experts.

I wish to have more of those kinds of events where I would be excited to both participate and take part in here in Rovaniemi although they feel to be quite far in between. Therefore, I am grateful I get to work on Northern Stars Seminar so I can show that it is possible to have successful events that are not strictly class related but not too labour intensive for persons not dwelled into business subjects to follow. In the near future, I would like to go deeper into my geek side and possibly work on game events or other such entertaining events that would provide more to the Rovaniemi and Lapland event scene.