11/06/2026
We are a few days away from and it's the right time to remind us of what makes it unique: the of community. Today's testimonial from Eythor Ivar Jonsson is a great example of how he found his "tribe" in EURAM:
My late friend and supervisor, Professor Pat Joynt, once told me that the secret to a successful academic career was simple: Find your tribe.
That became my mantra. It made perfect sense to seek out people researching and discussing similar issues from similar perspectives to advance your own scholarship. For me, those people were Silke Machold, Morten Huse, Sibel Yamak, Luca Gnan, Hans van Ees, and many others. Because they were all heavily involved in EURAM, I attended the Corporate Governance SIG for the first time during the 2008 conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Instantly, I knew: I had found my tribe.
A couple of years later, Luisa Jaffe (the Managing Director of EURAM at the time) casually mentioned to me that Iceland would be an interesting place for a future conference. I wasn't entirely sure if she was joking, but by 2015, I submitted a formal bid to host EURAM in Reykjavik.
The bid package was legendary—complete with support letters from both the President of Iceland and the Mayor of Reykjavik! Still, there weren’t many believers on the EURAM board who thought hosting a massive conference in a far-away island country was viable. The initial proposal was rejected, and Glasgow, Scotland, was chosen instead.
However, I was offered a counter-proposal: Host it in 2018.
We took the challenge. The 2018 Reykjavik conference became legendary in its own right, breaking multiple EURAM records for attendance.
Since then, my journey has come full circle. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege to serve on the EURAM Board, as National Representative, an ExCom member, VP of Conferences for six years, co-chair of the 2020 online conference in "Dublin," and Chair of all the EURAM Special Online Conferences—alongside chairing numerous tracks, symposiums, and events.
An entrepreneur once asked me if my extensive work with EURAM had made me a fortune. When I told him it was all entirely volunteer work—and that I paid all my own expenses—the guy nearly had a heart attack!
But I told him he was wrong. EURAM did make me a fortune.
It gave me a fortune in lifelong friendships, invaluable international experiences, and academic collaboration.
A long time ago, I stopped talking about EURAM as just my "tribe." Today, I call EURAM family.
