A reflection on hosting the IMA Finland celebration of Executive Assistants, Personal Assistants, Office Managers and Management Assistants – and what it takes to host a room that deserves to be celebrated, not lectured.
Some rooms need gravity. Some rooms need substance. And some rooms need a host who knows that the most important thing she can do, on this particular afternoon, is make sure the people in front of her feel genuinely seen.
That was the brief – implicit, but real – at the International Administrative Professionals Day celebration hosted by IMA Finland, International Management Assistants at HUONE Meeting and Event Venues.
It was, hands down, one of my favourite rooms of the year.
The audience nobody schedules properly
The room was full of Executive Assistants, Personal Assistants, Office Managers and Management Assistants from across Finland — and from across sectors: healthcare, wellbeing, education, industry, engineering, technology, data, finance, insurance, and some of the country’s most recognisable everyday brands.
I opened by calling them what they actually are: the invisible infrastructure that quietly runs Finnish organisations while everyone else thinks they do.
Nobody disagreed.
Here is what most event organisers underestimate about this audience: these are some of the most experienced, most discerning, most logistically literate people in any organisation. They have organised more events than most of the speakers they listen to. They know exactly when an MC has prepared and exactly when one hasn’t. They notice the run-of-show. They notice the timing. They notice the room temperature.
You do not host that audience casually. You earn the room.
The choice I made walking in
This is a community that, for most of the year, makes other people’s events run smoothly. Once a year, on 22 April, somebody hosts an event for them.
That single fact shaped every choice I made on stage.
I decided early that the energy of the day had to be celebratory, not corporate. Not a panel about “the future of work.” Not a leadership lecture. Not the kind of programme this audience produces for everyone else, recycled back at them.
So we opened with Bollywood. Specifically, the Dhurandhar title track at full volume, because I knew this crowd would move, and they did. The room woke up in seconds. By the time the first speaker took the floor, we had the kind of warmth and openness in the room that takes other events an entire morning to find.
That was a deliberate hosting decision. And it landed because it respected the audience, instead of performing at them.
The substance the room actually needed
Underneath the joy, the day held real content.
Maria Krajewska-Olkkonen from Hintsa Performance delivered a sharp keynote arguing that administrative professionals share more in common with Formula 1 drivers than most people realise. Same skill sets. Same mental demands. The only meaningful difference is that the F1 driver carries a literal risk of death; otherwise, the cognitive load is comparable. It was one of those framings that quietly reorders how a profession sees itself.
Anu Timmerbacka from Green Elephant ran a brilliantly designed session on influential communication, and trusted me enough to invite me into a hands-on rant exercise as part of it. (Yes, I ranted. On stage. On purpose.) The thesis was elegant: a good rant is a diagnostic. It reveals how we communicate, how others receive us, and where unconscious patterns leak through. Together, we explored how to communicate more consciously. It was the kind of exercise that only works in a room with high trust and a host willing to be a participant, not just an announcer.
That combination — Bollywood opening, F1 keynote, rant exercise, peer-to-peer cross-sector learning — is exactly the texture this audience deserves and rarely gets.
What this engagement says about how I work
If your organisation is considering booking me to host a celebratory, high-energy, people-centred event, the IMA Finland day is a useful reference point. Here is what it makes visible:
1. I host with energy, not just polish. A good host can run an agenda. A great host changes the temperature of the room. Energy is a craft skill, not an accident of personality, and I treat it that way.
2. I read the audience before I read the script. The Bollywood opening was not on the run sheet. It was a calibrated decision based on who was in the room and what kind of evening they deserved. That kind of in-the-moment judgment is most of the actual job.
3. I celebrate audiences who are usually the ones doing the celebrating. There is a particular respect required when you are hosting people who organise events for a living. They see every choice you make. I take that as a creative challenge, not a constraint.
4. I move between registers fluently. Bollywood, then F1 performance science, then a structured communication exercise, then peer-to-peer reflection, then a celebration close. That tonal range is the whole job, and it is what differentiates an event host from a presenter.
5. I work with the organisers as a team, not a vendor. Delivering an event well is always collective. Annika Karjalainen at IMA Finland brought a long-term commitment to this community that you cannot fake. The HUONE team made the venue sing. Hera Choi captured the room beautifully. Jussi Söderlund and Matleena Myllyrinne at Skilla added their craft. A host who walks in alone and tries to own the day is missing the point. I work with the team, and the team always shows.
6. I believe in the case for people skills, and I will say so on stage. One of my closing lines stayed with people afterwards: invest in people skills. Invest in bringing people together. The ROI is real, even when it is hard to put in a spreadsheet. I genuinely believe that, and I host accordingly.
What I do and what I bring to the rooms I’m hired for
I work as a multilingual event host, moderator, facilitator, keynote speaker, panel guest, and organisational community-building consultant across the Nordics, Central Asia and beyond, and as Associate Partner at SavvY Advisory.
For event hosting bookings specifically, I am a strong fit when your organisation is looking for:
- A host for celebratory, high-energy events that need warmth and structure in equal measure – anniversaries, professional days, awards evenings, gala dinners, staff appreciation days, community gatherings.
- A host who can read sophisticated audiences, including the ones who organise events for a living.
- A multilingual, multicultural presence comfortable across English, Russian and Uzbek, fluent in Nordic and Central Asian professional cultures.
- A facilitator who can move a room from polite attention to genuine participation, and back into reflection, without losing the thread.
- A long-term partner for organisations building professional communities across sectors, generations and backgrounds.
If that sounds like the room you are building, I would love to hear from you.
A final thank you
To Annika Karjalainen and the IMA Finland – International Management Assistants team, for the long-term commitment to this community and the trust to host it. To Maria Krajewska-Olkkonen at Hintsa Performance and Anu Timmerbacka at Green Elephant, for sessions that gave the room something genuinely useful to take home. To the HUONE Meeting and Event Venues team, Hera Choi, Jussi Söderlund and Matleena Myllyrinne at Skilla, for the team effort it always takes to deliver an event well. And to every Executive Assistant, Personal Assistant, Office Manager and Management Assistant in the room – thank you for the work you do every day that nobody notices, and for the joy you brought into a room that finally noticed you.
You are the infrastructure that makes Finnish organisations work. The least the rest of us can do is throw you a great party once a year.
See you at the next one.
