Eesti
1. How did you end up teaching at EBS?
When I was still at university there was one thing I knew for sure about my future – There is no way I will ever become a lecturer. My mother is a well known lecturer in economic theory at Tallinn University of Technlology and although I didn’t have any negative feelings about her profession I knew I wanted to do something different myself. My first teaching experiences were more as a hobby on the side of my other responsibilities. I worked at an advertising agency called Saatchi & Saatchi and started teaching advertising subjects in Nord Academy.
After the birth of my first child I entered Tallinn University of Technology doctoral level just for fun, much for the annoyance of my fellow students I called it housewife’s entertainment. I was entertaining myself there for a few years when I unexpectedly ended up in an interesting research project and after joining that it would have been embarassing not to finish my doctoral studies and soon after that I started teaching full time in EBS.
2. Please give us an overview of your career.
As I already mentioned in the previous question, becoming a lecturer wasn’t incorporated into my plans. Likewise, I didn’t plan on going to study economics, but since they opened a new and exciting Foreign Economics programme just when I graduated from high school, I chose this one. I had my internship at Ministry of Foreign Affairs and they even invited me to stay and have a job there, but this eclectic world of advertisements flashed its’ colorful lights towards me at the end of nineties and I was drawn to being an Advertising Manager at a wholesale company named Abestock. After few years I moved on and got a job at Saatchi & Saatchi as a Project Manager. Working as a lecturer introduced itself into my life soon after this.
3. Tell us something exciting about you that your students might not know.
I am not sure if there are any unusual things that are somehow unexpected. I don’t have any long term unusual hobbies, I do a lot of different things and I like to switch it up because I prefer change to a perfect result in one area. If I need to bring something out then a few years ago I was more serious about triathlon and competed quite a lot for a few seasons.
4. What is your greatest dream?
I am more of a person who doesn’t have that one big dream, but I want there to be a lot of cool people around me who I would strongly relate to and with whom I could do great things together.
5. If you could leave all your duties aside, what would be the first thing you would do?
Given the fact that we all are in quarantine because of Coronavirus right now, it would be hard to do something. But if we left that aside, my answer would be extremely predictible – I would travel.
6. What have been the greatest lessons of your career?
I think that my greatest lesson would be that same Coronavirus blowup, the quarantine and the solutions EBS provided us with. I think that every person who has done the same job for a long time, gets bored after a while (i guess?), and your mind starts to wonder on topics like „Who would I like to be when I grow up“.
Right now, when we are on our fourth week of Online studies, I can assure you with absolute certainty that I am happy and priviledged to work in the best functioning University, and maybe even in the best functioning educational institution, of Estonia. I have incredible colleagues, meaning lecturers as well as support staff, with whom we managed to start online lessons within few days. Of course there are some setbacks, little fuss, concerns – but over all I have recieved so much inspiration within those few weeks that I can feed from it for at least for few years now.
7. If someone would like to try out your area of speciality, what would be your suggestion on where and how to start out?
To someone that is interested in marketing, I would suggest to make the first entry and introduction to this world via marketing agencies. This provides you with the widest experience – you can experiment with working in different fields of marketing – this gives you an opportunity to specialize in one specific field if you’d wish. And if someone, somehow, for some reason would like to be an marketing lecturer, then I definitely suggest you to try this out first in the real world. This gives you the needed experience, the network and the trustworthiness.
8. How would you describe yourself as a person and as a lecturer?
I think I am rather an optimistic and cheerful person. I consciously try to control myself so that I wouldn’t be stuck in some pointless bad mood because I have seen how that can affect the people around you. As a lecturer I would like there to be a positive atmosphere in my classroom. I involve practitioners as guests to my lectures more than average. It’s important to me to show the students world outside of school as much as possible, so they can grasp how different companies operate and function – how’s the working environment and the culture. I have been sticking to that principle even throughout the quarantine – the physical visits have been cancelled, however, the representatives of those companies have kindly offered to still present their material via virtual mediums.
9. Can you recall one fun moment from your lectures?
I’ve had many great, inspiring and awesome moments. However, never anything extraordinary. One time, I think it was last semester, I suddenly started to give my lecture in the wrong language, and it happened two times in a row in the same class. Because this makes no difference to me in what langauge I give my lectures, and I constantly have parallel study groups in Estonian and English, I sometimes don’t even notice the language I am speaking in.
Editor: Brigitta Perlmann
Translator: Marlen Kuusk
