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The World Economic Forum has invited Minister of Education and Culture Sanni Grahn-Laasonen to the Young Global Leaders network

Ministry of Education and Culture
Publication date 9.5.2018 11.00 | Published in English on 9.5.2018 at 14.30
Press release
Kuva: Lauri Heikkinen/valtioneuvoston kanslia

Minister of Education and Culture Sanni Grahn-Laasonen has been invited to join the Young Global Leaders network of the World Economic Forum WEF. People who have been involved in the network include the President of France Emmanuel Macron, the founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, and the founders of Google Larry Page and Sergei Brin. The last Finn invited to the network before this is Ilkka Paananen, CEO of Supercell video game company.

Young Global Leaders is a collaborative community of exceptional young leaders from business world, politics, research and other sectors. It brings together decision-makers under the age of 40 who are in a leading position in different sectors and coaches them into ethical and responsible leadership. Membership in the networks also opens up opportunities to benefit from education offered by the world’s leading universities such as Harvard and Oxford and participate in the World Economic Forum’s famous Davos meeting. The Young Global Leaders meet on a regular basis. The first meeting of the network to be attended by Minister Grahn-Laasonen will be held in San Francisco next autumn.

“I am most grateful for being invited to this network of truly exceptional people, as well as very happy about the opportunities it will offer. This kind of strong, international and cross-sectoral network provides an excellent opportunity to promote globally significant agendas and construct a truly open and international Finland”, Minister Grahn-Laasonen says.

The Young Global Leaders network works under the auspices of the World Economic Forum. The Forum has a strong societal mission according to which even quite serious challenges faced by societies can be resolved by combining entrepreneurship and social responsibility. The highly diverse knowledge and expertise of the more than 800 Young Global Leaders has been utilised to support small growth enterprises, advise governments with the aim to reform the public sector and teaching African women to code, as well as for charitable work to reduce poverty and promoting green urban planning and a circular economy.

The present and former members of the Forum include Nobel Prize winners, government leaders and company CEOs and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadors. The Young Global Leaders from the Nordic countries include the Crown Prince of Norway Haakon, former Minister of Finance of Sweden Anders Borg, Icelandic-Danish contemporary artists Ólafur Elíasson, founder of the Noma Restaurant in Copenhagen René Redzepi and Karl-Johan Persson, CEO of H&M.

Read more about the programme: https://www.weforum.org/communities/young-global-leaders

Inquiries:

Daniel Sazonov, Special Adviser, tel. +358 45 129 6812