Meet Jussi Hakanen

For someone who grew up on American pop culture, moving from Helsinki to Florida has been a dream come true. "All my life I've loved Happy Days, action movies, Springsteen, Seinfeld, Conan, NBA, HBO, etc.," says Jussi Hakanen, who is working at Bonnier Corporation for three months under the GROW program. "It's awesome to be able to inhale the nation all that originates from."

In the U.S., Hakanen is working as a digital content specialist with a number of different magazines, in contrast to his job at MTV Media in Finland, where he works with public relations and publicity for pay TV network Canal+. But the jobs are similar at heart, he says. "The main business in the U.S. is to sell magazine subscriptions, back home it's pay-tv subscriptions, so the basic idea is the same," he says. 

Outside the job, however, things are pretty different: "On the first day I got here, I took a stroll in a park and was caught off guard with a sign that said 'Warning! The presence of alligators is likely in this lake!' And as I was taking a picture of the sign, there was a demonic splash  in the water. Although Bonnier did indeed set up insurance for the GROW program, I decided not to stick around to find out if it applies to gator gashes."

Hakanen says he'll miss the people most of all when he goes back to Helsinki - followed by late-night TV, from the Daily Show and Stephen Colbert, to Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow and Bill O'Reilly. And he only has strong encouragement for anyone considering GROW. "Working for a big corporation has its pros and cons," he says. "The GROW program is such an amazing pro it easily dwarfs all the imaginable cons. Nothing better than spending three months making brand new friends and learning brand new skills. All the reasons not to apply are basically excuses."