LEARN FROM A SHIPPING EXECUTIVE, MACHINE TO HUMAN VISIONARY

Margus Schults, maritime CEO and top HR leader as an advisor in the SHIFT Boardroom Challenge 2017! 

Margus Schults, the CEO of Tallink Silja is in charge of both considerable one-time investments and the happiness of returning customers. He is an in-demand speaker at executive conferences and also wishes to share his knowledge with novice leaders.

Who hasn’t faced challenges? But sometimes they snowball and you might not see a solution, looking at your issue from up close. We offered four companies the opportunity to present their challenge to the SHIFT boardroom, and leave with concrete learning. The board holds a great mix of experience and innovation. Margus Schults represents both areas, with over 20 years of international career in versatile leadership positions and great ideas and actions that resulted in being awarded the 2010 Quality Innovation Price for ‘Silja Line 1000 product developers’ by president Tarja Halonen. What a great foundation for helping participants come up with ideas and steps to take!

Schults has worked for AS Tallink Grupp since 2008, first as Head of Investor Relations and Organisational Development, and since 2009 as Tallink Silja’s CEO, managing a staff of 1,500 onshore and on the vessels – the latest being M/S Megastar, built here in Turku and operating since early 2017. Prior to Tallink, Schults worked in leadership positions for the SEB bank group in Tallinn, Riga and Stockholm. He has several positions of trust in organizations such as the Directors’ Institute Finland, the Finnish-Estonian Trade Association and, most recently, WWF Finland, where he has been a member of the supervisory board since 2016.

Schults was also a panelist on Customer Experience & Loyalty at the AEM 2017 Conference on 15 May. What is important to Schults? The theme of SHIFT 2017 , ‘collaboration’, for one. He would like to welcome greater collaboration within the tourism industry and increase the overall number of visitors and their length of stay in the Nordic countries. And he is all for action. ‘An idea is something, implementation is everything’, as @HankenSSE quoted him saying while he had the floor in the EJ2016 leadership program.

At SHIFT, you have the chance to meet a person who is a seasoned leader and strategist in the maritime industry, has led HR and financial planning, keeps relations with key clients, creates marketing campaigns, improves brand awareness, and masters social media business strategy and customer loyalty programs.

Text by Annika Perho

REFERENCES:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/margusschults/

https://www.seafocus.fi/aem-2017-programme

http://yle.fi/uutiset/3-8962252