Panel: Different Looking Finns
Finns don't all look alike!
Join Kirsti Westphalen,Thuong Tan and Melina Korvenkontio to explore some of our different ethnic backgrounds.
Kirsti Westphalen
Mrs. Kirsti Westphalen has worked in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs ever since the beginning of 1980's. She has been posted in Paris, Beijing, New York, Damascus and Rabat.
Mrs. Westphalen is an expert in political Islam, radicalisation and counter terrorism.
In September 2008 she started as the Consul General of Finland in Los Angeles.
She is married to Abdellatif Moufakkir who is a veteran TV-journalist from Morocco.
Melina Korvenkontio
Melina is a twenty years old young woman from Helsinki. She gratuated from high-school in 2010 and currently is working in a digital-agency Valve. Melina's father is from Finland and mother from Tanzania. She represents two different culture but is a finnish girl in heart. Her mother tongue is Finnish & English but her mother has taught her to speak Swahili since she was small. Since primary school Melina has been able to learn different languages such as French, English and Swedish.
Melina is a former synchronize skater. She skated for 13 years and manage to travel with the team to France, German and Switzerland. In 2004 they came second at the Junior's World Challenge Cup in Switzerland. Nowadays she concentrates in dancing and other activities.
This coming fall she is attending to a shcool of commercial exploitation called Markkinointi-Instituutti in Helsinki. She is eager to study marketing communications and social media. The envolving world of media is easy to equate to since her generation grew up in the world of computers. chats and blogs.
