Written by Terttu Isohanni

I'm now the only surviving founding member of then EAPS, later EUMA, now IMA Finland.

In October 1973 I was in Copenhagen participating in an international communications seminar. The main speaker at the seminar was British lawyer Sonia Vanular, already living in France at the time.

Sonia had noticed from the list of participants that I worked as a training director at Ekonomiliitto (Finnish Association of Business School Graduates), and during the break time she came to talk to me and told me that she is founding a European network of management assistants. Sonia asked if I could come to Zurich in February 1974, she had invited management assistants from several countries to form the network there.

Sonia visited Finland several times during that time and one of her visits got a very good coverage in a Finnish business magazine. It was good publicity about what was being established in Finland.

My employer Ekonomiliitto, Finnish Association of Business School Graduates was enthusiastic about the idea as we had quite a number of management assistants in our membership. Management assistants were excited to get united and have the opportunity to network nationally and internationally.

One of my vivid memories from the 1980’s is the IMA conference in Athens where we advertised the following year's conference in Finland by walking in the streets of Athens in national costumes with Finnish flags flying in the air. In spite of our traditional look we wanted to profile Finland as a high-tech country and we had found a trendy Nokia film with those briefcase-sized mobile phones to show. It had been hard to find as most films promoting Finland most commonly featured reindeers...

The IMA members have always used new technology to their advantage. From its early days, the era before internet, paperless accounting, let alone artificial intelligence, IMA has always been up-to-date, sometimes even ahead of its time.

IMA is a resource to its members. IMA is active and powerful, this has been achieved together.

To IMA with love,

Terttu Isohanni