Board Members

Timo Holopainen Ph.D., MBA
Timo is working as Principal Lecturer at Turku UAS and has over 20 years of international sales and management experience. Timo has passion for sales and he has been Sales Competition Director over 20 times, both online and onsite. He was ESC2021 Competition Director and is Chairman of the European Sales Competition Association.

Harri Lappalainen
Harri is an internationally acknowledged development project specialist, having experience of numerous EU projects since 1990’s. Harri is one of the founding fathers of the ESC concept and has been acting as a Head Judge in several national and international sales competitions. Harri is a Senior Advisor at Turku UAS (Finland) and coordinating South-East Asian Sales Competition SEASAC project, funded by the European Commission.

Myra Qiu, MSc, FHEA
Process & Quality Manager, Graduation & Examination Board, Education Board, Management Team Member and lecturer at Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands.
Myra is the Competition Director of ESC23. She has extensive experiences in organising events and working in an international environment with students, lecturers and staff from 100+ nationalities.

Dr Alexander C. Bauer
Associate Professor at Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences across Europe. Alexander is the Head of Jury of ESC23. He has international sales & management experience leading global sales teams in their negotiations worldwide. He holds a PhD in International Business Management. He is also a Trainer for Presentation Skills, Rhetoric and Sales. His current research focuses on professional sales training and sales coaching.

Jeanet Castel MCC
Coordinator of the Sales curriculum, Senior Lecturer and Student Coach at HAN University of Applied Sciences in Arnhem and Nijmegen. She has 20+ years of experience in FMCG in field account-and sales management. “I love to help young people grow in their skills and as a person. Getting out of their comfort zone, like participating in Sales competitions, can have a big influence on that”.

Johannes Reiterer
The Head of the Master Programme Business Development & Sales Management at the University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt. Johannes was the Competition Director of the first virtual ESC in 2020. His professional background is in the medical device industry. His area of expertise is sales digitalization and value selling.

Tuula Ryhänen M.Sc.(Econ).
Tuula works at Haaga-Helia UAS as a Competence Area Director and is responsible for sales training. She has more than 25 years of versatile experience in the field of education. She has also worked in various marketing and sales positions. Together with national and international networks and Haaga-Helia’s sales teachers, she wants to be involved in raising the appreciation of sales. Developing sales training is also important to Tuula.

Riku Hytönen M.Sc.(Econ).
Riku is working as Senior Lecturer at Haaga-Helia UAS. Prior to his teaching career, Riku has over 20 years of experience in international sales and marketing, particularly in medical and pharmaceutical business. Riku is the Competition Director of ESC 2024 at Haaga-Helia in Helsinki, Finland. During previous years Riku has acted as coach of the students competing in ESC as well as the Finnish national sales competition, Best Seller Competition.