Dr. Leena Kirjavainen received one of the highest honors in her home country last year. The Cross of Merit of the White Rose of Finland was awarded to Leena for her years of work in home economics and resource management across the globe. The Association of Home Economics Teachers in Finland applied for the honor through the Ministry of Education during the last term of President Tarja Halonen, and presented to Leena on August 22, 2013.
Leena is a 1984
Ph.D. graduate of the resource management program at Virginia Tech.
She was on campus recently giving the inaugural presentation for the Globalization of Consumers: A year of Study program in AHRM for 2013-2014.
Leena's talk, GlobalizationTrends and Families' Livelihoods: Issues in Africa, was presented to over 70 students and faculty in Fralin Auditorium on September 23, 2013. She identified areas of globalization and environmental changes that impact consumers everywhere and highlighted examples from the Horn of Africa where she currently works as a consultant to the Intra-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in Djibouti.
Leena is known as an effective program coordinator, team leader and interactive manager as well as a mentor, multi-cultural communicator and a high-level negotiator in the international arena. Her special interests have been in women's empowerment and capacity building through education and skills training, and in strengthening agricultural and home economics institutions. Recently, she has refocused on gender roles in household food and nutrition security, livelihoods, climate change, emergencies and conflicts.
She served the International Labor Organization in Trinidad and Tobago (1975-77), the Nordic Governments in Tanzania (1977-79), and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, where her appointments included Project Manager in Sudan (1984-89), Director of Women and Population Division at FAO Headquarters in Rome (1992-97), and FAO Representative to Laos (2003-06).
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