Fulbright Finland News Magazine
The past year as a Fulbright visiting scholar at Stanford University has been a fulfilling experience both professionally and personally. It has allowed me to make use of my background in diplomacy, gain a whole new perspective on my field of work from an academic standpoint, and enrich my career path tremendously.
This experience would not have been possible without the generous support of the Fulbright Finland Foundation and the ASLA-Fulbright Mid-Career Professional Development Program. I am honored to be the inaugural recipient of the Seeking Solutions for Global Challenges award, which is intended for Finnish professionals who want to impact the future and make a difference, finding solutions to current and global challenges through their professional projects.
My research project continued where I left off working for the Finnish Government at the European Union and NATO with a focus on technology policy. By analyzing the underlying global trends, identifying policy objectives, and exploring means for their implementation, it provides concrete policy recommendations for a high-tech country like Finland to pursue in its own diplomatic efforts as part of its foreign, security, development, and trade relations. To that end, I collected dozens of inputs from various stakeholders in government, academia, private sector, and civil society both in the U.S. and around the world.
As one of the leading universities on technology issues, Stanford proved to be an excellent place to conduct my research with its location right at the heart of Silicon Valley. The access it provides to a broad spectrum of thought leaders on and off campus is one of a kind, especially with Stanford’s reach across the top companies and successive administrations.
While innovation-focused California can often feel far removed from the more policy-oriented circles of my previous stomping grounds in Brussels and Washington, D.C., that gap is now narrowing with the profound impact technology is having on our economy, democracy, and security.
The competitiveness of our economies in the technology race, the deepening digital divides globally, the transformative societal impacts of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum, synthetic biology and wireless communications, the battle for their global governance, as well as the risks posed for our national and economic security are all shared challenges that require joint solutions.
Promoting sustainable growth and development in the technology sector, ensuring values-based tech governance, securing the technology ecosystem, as well as deepening international technology partnerships are all areas where Finland and the United States can forge an even closer relationship and learn from each other.
I will be returning to Finland invigorated by the experience and can highly recommend the program to other professionals like myself that may not have a background as a researcher but are interested in deepening their expertise in academia.
Heikki Hietala
Counselor, Adviser to the Under-Secretary of State for International Trade
Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland
2023–24 Seeking Solutions for Global Challenges Award
Read the Fulbright Finland News 1/2024!
