Jorma Partinen
Jorma Partinen writes: "After Columbia Business School, I worked for IBM in a number of different countries -- Finland, France, Belgium, and the United States. I retired from salaried work in 1995 from IBM’s European Headquarters where I was a senior executive in the European Management Team. My activities since have been involved with improving competitive strategy of various companies, mainly in information technology industries. Many times these assignments involved board memberships and/or long-term retainers as a sparring partner for the owner(s) of small businesses. Since Columbia, I tasted living in different countries. My home country is Finland, and currently we spend summers there on the seaside in an environment similar to the lake regions of the United States or Quebec. My wife is French but she learned to speak Finnish also. As she is French it is natural that our city life and residence is in our preferred city, Paris. There we spend much of the fall and spring. I also like to hunt (deer, wild boar, elk, etc.) and France offers good possibilities for that. Not to mention my hobby of fine wine collecting and tasting. From time to time this is shared with a small number of Business School Alumni, including Bernard Lindt '65 and Seppo Saario '65. In the winters, we tend to be in Meribel, Savoie, one of the best skiing areas in Europe. I take a Season Pass and that way I can ski as much and when I want using our apartment there as a base. As for classmates, I met Kanju Sugimoto from Japan at the Pan-European Reunion of 2003 in Berlin. I am looking forward to the coming reunion this April. I hope to meet some of you again on that occasion. JPartinen63@gsb.columbia.edu."