Laura Saarikoski

Oxford is the fourth and by far the most famous university I have studied at – and the sixth year I have lived abroad. Yet I have worked for the same newspaper, the leading Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat, since I was 20 years old. It's a big newspaper in a small country, so there are different career paths available within the same paper.

Since 2005 I have worked as the Sunday editor in charge of the Helsingin Sanomat Sunday feature stories, a separate 7-8 page section covering the weeks' events. Before that I was a political reporter following the EU in Helsinki and travelling to summits in Brussels. In 1997-2001 I was a freelance correspondent based in Washington D.C., where I also took some courses in American politics at the George Washington University.

I got my Masters degree at the universities of Tampere and Helsinki studying journalism and political science. However, my most memorable education by far was received at the Marist College, a Catholic all girls' school in Auckland, New Zealand, where I went through the Sixth form as an exchange student. That early experience convinced me of the powers of journalism: every culture offers a different window to the world, and those worlds need to be explained.