Ambassador Alec Aalto will speak on EU-US-Russia relations.
Ambassador Aalto has been a senior government official as well as a diplomat. After graduating from Law School at Helsinki University and studying International Law at Oxford University he worked first as a journalist at the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation and then as Head of Information for the Finnish government. He left government service to become Vice President for Communications at Neste Corporation. From there he joined the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, where he worked as Director General for Press and Cultural Affairs and Deputy Director General for Trade and Economic Relations before becoming ambassador to Austria and Permanent Representative to the UN Organizations in Vienna. In 1995 he moved to the Prime Minister’s office, first as Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister and then for six years as State Secretary for EU Affairs. He then returned to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and served as ambassador to Italy and to Sweden, before retiring in 2010.
