60 Seconds with Diego Vega from the Hanken School of Economics

Diego Vega

Hanken University

Title: Associate professor, supply chain management and social responsibility

Location: Helsinki, Finland

Experience: 15 years as an academic and program director of humanitarian logistics

Modern: You just received a Humanitarian Award from the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN) for Research and Academic Contribution. Tell us about your work and its importance in the
supply chain.

Vega: Since my doctorate course work in humanitarian logistics, I’ve been interested in how people build theories to solve problems. And essentially all of my work comes back to this baseline. It’s the case with my university teaching as well as my directorship of the Humlog Institute at Hanken University.

The ALAN award recognizes contributions to the establishment of more efficient and effective humanitarian supply chains. When you think about it, that’s the essence of ALAN, mobilizing the supply chain for emergency response.

Modern: So, you’re in Finland, but ALAN is U.S. based. How did you make a connection?

Vega: Humanitarian logistics is actually a fairly small and tight community even though it is worldwide, just like the academics who nominated me for the award.

As part of that worldwide effort, I’m a board member of the United Nations’ World Humanitarian Forum’s supply chain management programming board. I’m also helping to review the 2022-2026 strategy for the UN’s Global Logistics cluster. To the point of a small, tight community, the World Humanitarian Forum is the largest and most inclusive forum of its kind in the world.

Modern: What’s the most interesting humanitarian logistics project you have worked on lately?

Vega: As you can imagine I work with what are essentially temporary supply chains created out of a specific humanitarian needs.

Last year, the NGO Doctors without Borders wanted to reexamine supply chains that were created to deal with Covid. They were interested in determining what could be done differently and better in future pandemic supply chains. We did 50 interviews across many organizations and countries to detail how each approached the supply chain at that time.

The report we wrote for Doctors without Borders is now being considered as part of an international standard for humanitarian supply chains. Our hope is that it is useful for a range of other NGOs faced with human and natural disasters most anywhere in the world.

Modern: What’s the big picture of your work?

Vega: I focus on developing strategies. These are strategies that help NGOs do things differently and have more impact in their supply chains. In the end, we want to develop strategies and plans to make future humanitarian mission responses better.

Modern: Can we assume that same premise is part of what you teach in the classroom?

Vega: Yes, it is. I want to teach students how to think. How to solve problems, not just sit in class and listen. I want them to learn new ways to solve problems and build new frameworks that can be replicated by others.

As part of that, I created the humanitarian logistics’ MOOC, which stands for massive open online courses. The most recent MOOC focused on Sudan’s migration crisis. And the students had to come up with their solutions to the humanitarian logistics aspects of that crisis. They did a really nice job.