- I graduated 1994 and worked as a nurse for a couple of years in Vaasa until we moved back to my home town Kokkola in 1998.
In Kokkola Maria worked as a school nurse and a public health nurse in child health care. After that she worked as a home-care supervisor and came across RAI for the first time.
- When working in Home Care I was asked to be a project manager for a dementia and care-project. This led me further to a project on senior-care that I was starting up in Kokkola, Maria says. While working with the senior-care project an old friend of hers, Joakim Sandbacka, who at the time was working at Raisoft, reached out to Maria and said that they needed Swedish-speaking instructors.
- I started at Raisoft as a free-lance instructor in February 2009 and by the end of 2010 I was employed by the company, first part-time, then full-time and now 80 % of my own will. Fridays are my days off.
- In the early years our training sessions for the customers were very structured and every session built on the previous one. The training was quite straight forward and didn't require too much preparation. I got print-outs, forms and manuals from Anne (Boholm) at the office and took them along with me all across Finland.
During the last years the training has developed into on-line schoolings which can be done anytime and anywhere and at the same time the roles of the experts have changed tremendously. The work is challenging and interesting in a new way – and requires more preparation.
- Now we get to help our customer in a completely different way. We walk alongside and support our customers in various quality and development projects. Every situation is customized according to the client´s needs, situation and goals.
Raisoft has had feed-back from customers wanting a more hands-on approach and concrete training: customers want to get to use the RAIsoft-programs right from the start.
- We have really focused on this and I believe that we are going in the right direction. The feed-back has been very positive, Maria says.
As a multilingual person Maria has had an important role in the internationalization process of the company both at conferences and as an instructor.
- In September 2014 I was in San Sebastian, Spain, to give a speech, from a nurse´s point of view, on how RAIsoft programs are utilized in Finland. At the end of the same year I held the first RAIsoft training sessions in Malaysia and Singapore on how to do the evaluations and how to utilize the programs. I have had the opportunity to represent Raisoft at many conferences for instance in Australia, Belgium and Sweden.
In her free time Maria definitely spends outdoors. With her family, consisting of a husband, daughter and son, she spends her time at the summer cottage, boating and in the nature.
- I enjoy active exercising throughout the year and I like going to Lapland to ski, hike and bike, Maria says and admits that she is suffering from a serious case of dog fever.
- I am definitely a dog person. Our dog Bono passed away a couple of years ago and now we´re looking for Golden retriever or brown Labrador puppies but it seems that there is a great demand for these, Maria sighs.