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Who are we?
Last updated on 20 November 2002
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 2000 i-Kan Solutions (UK) Ltd.
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Helen Bell Farrell, editor-in-chief, and founder editor of Balkan Energy Review, has eight years of experience reporting on the Eastern and Central European oil and gas industry. She has worked for market-leading specialist newsletters, among them Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, European Gas Markets and Petroleum Argus.
Helen is a graduate of Edinburgh University where she read Russian and Byzantine history. She is fluent in Russian. Dominic, Helen's husband, converses freely in Russian, Czech, French and Spanish, and has a smattering of modern Hebrew and Turkish. Both Helen and Dominic are fluent in English too.
Helen and Dominic have four children, Alice, Susanna, Frances and Chad, all currently under seven Alice, the eldest, is Flora's (the webmaster's) favourite, and starts school in May 2000. After the arrival of Frances, in 1996, Helen took a career break as it became increasingly difficult to interview important energy personalities to the background accompaniment of screaming children. Helen lives in Huntingdon, England and her hobbies are single malt whisky and Czech beer.
Helen is currently on sabbatical following Dominic's new job in Cambridgeshire in April 2001, but then a little boy called Chad arrived in March 2002 ........
Dr. Flora Kan, information architect, and the managing partner for Balkan Energy Review, has lived and worked in the Balkans for eight years. In 1995, she was appointed the project manager for the European Commission Synergy project in setting up the Romanian Energy Policy Association and in 1996, she set up the Bulgarian Energy Policy Association again with EC Synergy funding. Dr. Kan served for four years as an elected member of the board of administration of the Romanian Energy Policy Association where she was the only woman and the youngest member.
Flora is a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge where she read Physics. She gained a doctorate in Artificial Intelligence from City University while working as a research assistant at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. She worked for two years at Hitachi Europe UK in Advanced manufacturing software research and product development. Flora is fluent in Chinese and Romanian, some accident prone French and conversational German.
Flora has a lovely tortoiseshell cat, Cleopatra, who is currently living in Bucharest with her housekeeper Ioana. Cleopatra is two years old.
Flora lives variously in Bucharest, Paris and London. During 2001 and 2002, Flora has been working in Energy Labelling in China. She is an amateur classical fiddler. Until she moved to Romania, she was a member of the Heisenberg piano trio -they can play either very in tune or very together - but never very in tune and very together.
Both Helen and Flora attended St. Felix School, Southwold, England (entry in the Good School Guide). Helen taught Flora English. They shared a dorm together in 1978, had pillow fights and walked together to St. Paul's Cathedral in Rome on foot at 6:00am in the morning - but not necessarily in that order.
All news in Balkan Energy Review is drawn from on-site sources in Romania, Bulgaria and other parts of Eastern and Central Europe.
Mikko Ruotsalainen, editor of Balkan Energy Review, graduated at the prestigious Sciences Po (a Grande Ecole) in Paris in 2002, majoring in Finance and Commercial Law. Mikko has been a freelance Paris correspondent of the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation since 1998 and in November 2000, he joined the Balkan Energy Review team where he is the youngest member, following the sabbatical leave of Helen Bell Farrell.
Mikko is fluent in Finnish, French, English and Swedish, and can bumble along in German and Italian too. He is an accredited French-Finnish translator and as an elected student representative, he was an ex-officio member of the Board of Direction at Sciences Po.
In his spare time, Mikko writes more or less serious poetry and composes his own less serious songs on his keyboard. His favourite city is Zurich where he visits regularly to have a well chilled Hurlimann with his friends.
Mikko has neither cat nor children. He lives in an 11 sqm apartment in Paris with his laptop and may be a mouse or two.
Andrei Nicolae Iva, Romania correspondent for Balkan Energy Review since October 2002, has 10 years of journalistic experience, five of which with Reuters News Agency, reporting on Romania's oil, gas and power industries, its capital market and from time to time the banking system. He was also involved in several projects developed by The Risk Advisory Group and helped a young local team of software creators as PR consultant.
Andrei is a graduate of the Romanian-American University in Bucharest. He is fluent in English and can read and understand Russian. Andrei's wife Angelica works for The Shell Group in Romania as External Affairs Manager and she is fluent in English too.
Andrei and Angelica have two-year-old twins, Bogdan and Theodor.
Andrei lives in Bucharest, Romania, and his hobbies are archaeology and Roman and Byzantine history. He never refuses a good steak and a cold beer.
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