After a distinguished career with the United Nations and the Finnish Foreign Ministry, Martti Ahtisaari was elected President of the Republic of Finland in 1994. Throughout his career he has been actively involved in conflict resolution, state building, and mediation.  

In recognition of his outstanding contribution and "for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts”, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2008.  

Mr. Ahtisaari served as Finland’s Ambassador in Tanzania and held several UN roles in Namibia from 1975-1988, leading the UN operation in Namibia (UNTAG) from 1989-1990. From 1990-1993, he was State Secretary in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. During this time he was also Special Adviser and later Chair of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Working Group of the International Conference on the former Yugoslavia and the UN Secretary General's Special Representative for former Yugoslavia (1993).  

Upon leaving the office of president which he held from 1994 to 2000, Mr. Ahtisaari continued to focus his work in international peace-mediation and conflict resolution. Among his most notable successes was his facilitation of the peace process between the Government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement which resulted in the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding that ended thirty years of conflict between the two. He was Inspector of the Irish Republican Army's arms dumps with fellow inspector Cyril Ramaphosa in 2000 and chaired an independent panel on the security and safety of UN personnel in Iraq in 2003. He has served as the UN Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa and Personal Envoy of the OSCE CiO for Central Asia.  

Between November 2005 and February 2008, Mr. Ahtisaari was the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the future status process for Kosovo. In 2000 Mr. Ahtisaari founded Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), a non-governmental organisation committed to helping the international community to practice more effective preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and post-conflict state building. Today President Ahtisaari remains chairman of CMI.  

Martti Ahtisaari is also active in numerous non-governmental and non-profit organisations. He is Co-Chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), Chairman of the Independent Commission on Turkey and the Chair of the Governing Council of Interpeace. He is Director-at-Large of the ImagineNations Group, a member of the Silatech Board of Trustees, and member of the Prize Committee of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. The 2000 Fulbright Prize was awarded to Martti Ahtisaari. President Ahtisaari, a diplomat for over 30 years and president of Finland from 1994 to 2000, was honored for his work as peacemaker in some of the world's most troubled areas.