Tarja Mankkinen is Head of Development at the Police Department of the Finnish Ministry of the Interior. She has a Master in Political Sciences from the University of Helsinki (1986) and she completed several training programmes in management and leadership. Prior she fulfilled a variety of other functions at the Ministry of the Interior. She is the National coordinator for the prevention of violent radicalisation and extremism and has been Chairperson of the National Network Preventing Violent radicalisation and extremism since 2011. Moreover, she has held managerial and strategic responsibility for a range of security programmes in Finland and has built wide experience with evaluation programmes (Europol, crime investigation) as well as with international co-operation, such as the Schengen and the EU Radicalisation Awareness Network RAN. Tarja is the author of various publications and has presented a range of lectures, including on the prevention of violent extremism