Christine Petersen, PMP, Founder and Managing Director

Christine's approach to training is to ensure that the course content clearly targets the needs of the participants, that they learn quickly and are ready to apply their new knowledge and self-awareness as soon as they are back in the work environment. She believes that if participants are enjoying themselves, are interacting and are actively participating, then they will be much more likely to achieve this goal.

Christine has been managing large, multi-national projects Europe-wide since 1990. She is now based in Switzerland, speaks Danish, English, French, Italian and German fluently, and has been training in these languages since 1999.

Her experience as a Project Manager led her to realise the vital importance of using people management skills in Project Management. Christine founded VIRAK in 2001 in order to be able to train, coach and consult full-time and has since built up an important client base throughout Europe. petersen@virak.com

Steven Sloan , PMP, Director

Above all, Steven believes that project management processes and tools should be used to support the work and should not in themselves become an overwhelming burden on project teams.

After graduating from Glasgow University with a B.Sc. in Electronic Engineering, Steven worked in multi-national, hi-tech companies gaining experience in a wide range of functions – Services, Sales, Human Resources and Communications. Involvement in business process improvement, specifically related to new product development and introduction, gave him a hands-on appreciation of the need for project management both as a discipline and a culture in driving change within organizations. sloan@virak.com

Anders Pedersen, PMP, Director

Anders has a patience with which he gives his audience room to learn and he has always enjoyed finding, matching and challenging each participant's different levels and competencies. He does this using his natural empathy and well developed sense of humour. Seeing the progress and providing the right tools for each individual is what drives Anders.

With experience in training clients and colleagues since 2000, training and all its aspects have been a very central part of Anders's professional career since he finished his master degree in economy and finance in 1999. Anders is very confident standing before any audience doing what he enjoys most – teaching and encouraging his audience with often very different backgrounds to learn and transform sometimes highly complex subjects into “human language”. pedersen@virak.com

Michele Longpre, PMP, Senior trainer

Michèle believes that training is a personalized development experience based on the needs, objectives and constraints of the organization and its culture. Her competency and experiential based training approach ensures coherence between the needs of the individuals and the needs of the organization.

A Swiss and Canadian national, graduated from Sherbrooke University, Canada with a Master’s degree in Education Management, Michèle has been working in the field of management and training for more than 20 years. PMP certified, trilingual in French, English and German, Michèle has time and again demonstrated her professional expertise in developing and implementing multilateral projects world-wide. Several multinationals, governments and NGOs have benefited from her services in overseeing projects in multicultural and multidisciplinary environments. She combined this expertise with many years of training. longpre@virak.com

Kashka Huyton, Associate

Kashka Huyton comes to VIRAK from the international humanitarian sector, bringing over ten years of experience establishing, implementing and coordinating humanitarian programmes in Africa, Asia, Middle East and Europe, in response to conflict and disaster (in Kosovo, Chad, Iraq, Pakistan, occupied Palestinian territories, among others), working predominantly for the United Nations.

A British and Polish national, Kashka holds an MSc in International Humanitarianism from the Oxford Brooks University in the United Kingdom. Kashka is fluent in English, French, Spanish and Polish and has a fair degree of Russian. 

Experienced in working in highly charged political environments, in the aftermath of an earthquake, civil strife or a complex political emergency, Kashka is very comfortable working in stressful conditions.  

Kashka is passionate about training. She thrives on  working in a multicultural settings, and enjoys bringing her wide multi-disciplinary approach in project management and coordination from the humanitarian sector into training and course facilitation. huyton@virak.com