Skip to content

Wisdom Weaver

WW-Heinonen-OP

Olli-Pekka Heinonen

EDUCATION • SWITZERLAND • FUTURE OF EDUCATION

Biography

Mr Olli-Pekka Heinonen became the 8th Director General of the International Baccalaureate Organization on 1 May 2021. Prior to joining the IB, Mr Heinonen was Director General of the Finnish National Agency for Education where he worked from January 2017. Mr Heinonen had an active career in politics in Finland between 1994 and 2002: he was Minister of Education and Science from 1994-1999; Minister of Transport and Communication from 1999-2002 and a Member of Parliament from 1995-2002. From 2002 to 2012, Mr Heinonen was Director of Yle, the Finnish national public broadcasting company, before joining the Finnish Prime Minister’s Office in March 2012 as State Secretary, responsible for organizing and leading the office. He has also been responsible, as State Secretary, for the portfolios of the Ministry of Education and Culture, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Development and then as State Secretary at the Ministry of Finance of Finland. Mr Heinonen holds a Master of Laws from the University of Helsinki in Finland and has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the Faculty of Education and Psychology at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. He is married and has three children.

What inspires you?

Learning.

What relationship has been most influential in your life?

Interdependency.

What’s on your bookshelf?

The Master and his Emissary, Iain McGilchrist

Adaptive Action – Leveraging Uncertainty in your Organization, Glenda Eoyang and Royce Holladay

Experiential Learning, David A Kolb

A New Synthesis of Public Administration – Serving in the 21st Century, Jocelyne Bourgon

Finite and Infinite Games, James P Carse

How we Learn, Stanislav

Dehaene Podcasts by Otto Scharmer, Nora Bateson, David Snowden, John Vervaeke

Back To Top