Alumni Story By Petteri Suckman

My name is Petteri Suckman, but everybody calls me Petsa. I started in AIESEC in 1996 as a freshman at Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland. Because I was the loudest of the group, they elected me to be the Local Committee President about 6 months after joining.

I got so fascinated by this organization that I traveled to approximately 20 countries with AIESEC during the first 2 years of my university studies. Later I was elected to the Member Committee of AIESEC in Finland, to work full-time for one year.

One of my magic moments was chairing (i.e. leading the facilitators’ team) the Slovenian Motivational Seminar, a 4-day event in a small mountain hotel, with approximately 50 delegates. Our facilitators were very inexperienced, and we had not had time to prepare our sessions well. I was able to convince the team that if they had to choose between smiling and working, they should choose smiling.
Conferences are so much about the right atmosphere that it does not matter how much you have prepared. You have to make it fun as well. This conference was very successful because the 50 of us were able to connect with each other. In the Closing Plenary we had grown-up men crying because they didn’t want to go home. I’m not exaggerating! What I learned in Slovenia is that sometimes life gives us odd situations. We can choose if we smile through them or if we kill ourselves trying to work through.

I’m currently working as an interfacing specialist and product manager for clinical information systems at GE Healthcare. They wanted someone with “vitality”. This is the English word for managing to lead a teleconference with Canadians, Belgians, French and Finns without disclosing the fact that you know nothing about the technical substance discussed.

In AIESEC you learn to get in and out of trouble fast, and make challenging situations look like a routine. We are set to do great things in life. Just remember, “When everything else fails, at least have fun!”