Our Team

Tarja Halonen served as President of the Republic of Finland from 2000-2012. She was elected to the Parliament in 1979 and served five terms before assuming the office of the President in 2000, becoming Finland's first female head of state. During her presidency, she was Co-Chair of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders, and Co-Chair of the UN Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Global Sustainability. She is Chair of the Board of the University of Helsinki and continues to work closely with the UN.

Riikka Karppinen is a prominent youth leader, environmental activist, and politician from Finnish Lapland. In 2012, Karppinen was elected to the municipal council of Sodankylä, Finland, and has since served three terms, becoming Chairperson in 2021. From 2019 to 2021, Karppinen served as Vice President of Finland’s Green Party. She is also a Member of the Board of the Arctic Society of Finland and the Regional Council of Lapland, the governing body responsible for regional planning and development. In addition to her political career, Karppinen studies Finnish language and literature at the University of Helsinki and works as political assistant for the Minister for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto and the Minister of the Interior Krista Mikkonen.

Sara Olsvig is the International Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), the Indigenous Peoples’ Organization that represents approximately 180,000 Inuit of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Chukotka. She has over a decade of leadership in promoting Indigenous peoples’ rights and interests, protection of the Arctic environment, and sustainable development in regional and international fora such as the Arctic Council and the United Nations. Olsvig served as a member of the Parliament of Denmark from 2011 to 2015 and the Parliament of Greenland from 2013 to 2018. She led the political party Inuit Ataqatigiit from 2014 to 2018. She was Vice Premier and Minister of Social Affairs, Families, Gender Equality and Justice in the Government of Greenland from 2016 to 2018. Olsvig has actively contributed to the work of the Constitutional Commission of Greenland, as well as the Human Rights Council of Greenland. She holds a MSc in Anthropology from the University of Copenhagen, and is a doctoral candidate at Ilisimatusarfik, the University of Greenland.

Evon Peter is Neetsaii Gwich'in and Koyukon from Vashrąįį K'ǫǫ (Arctic Village), Alaska. An advocate for Indigenous knowledge, languages, and rights, he is a senior research scientist at the Center for Alaska Native Health Research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and previously served as UAF's former Vice Chancellor for Rural, Community, and Native Education. He serves on the boards for the Gwich'in Council International and the University of the Arctic.

Gunn-Britt Retter was born and raised in the coastal Saami community Unjárga-Nesseby by Varangerfjord in the north-eastern Norway. She is a teacher of training from Sámi University College (Guovdageaidnu - Kautokeino, Norway) and holds an MA in Bilingual studies from University of Wales. Since 2001, Retter has worked with Arctic Environmental issues, first at Arctic Council Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat (IPS) (Copenhagen, Denmark) and since 2005 in the present position as Head of Arctic and Environmental Unit of the Saami Council. Gunn-Britt has served as a board member of the Sámi University of Applied Sciences (2011-2019) and has served as Member of Saami Parliament (Norway) for two terms (2005 – 2013). In her position as head of the Arctic and Environmental Unit in the Saami Council, Retter has been involved in issues related to Indigenous peoples and Indigenous knowledge related to climate change, biodiversity, language, pollution and management of natural resources.

Alice Rogoff is publisher and owner of ArcticToday. Rogoff is also the founder of Arctic Imperative, a lecture series dedicated to raising awareness of circumpolar north issues. She is the former publisher and owner of Alaska Dispatch and the co-founder of several other organizations, including the Alaska Native Arts Foundation. She previously served at The Washington Post as assistant to publisher Donald Graham, and she was the creator of The Washington Post's National Weekly edition.