Matti Hakamäki, Director of the Finnish Folk Music Institute, has worked as a musician, teacher and folk music pedagogue since 2005. His areas of expertise in consultancy include community-based approaches and participatory processes, nominations, non-formal music education, sustainable development and heritage documentation and archive practices. Hakamäki has served as Chairperson and Vice Chairperson of the Nordic and Baltic ICH Network since 2019, and as a member of the Executive Board of the ICH NGO Forum since 2022 (Chairperson 2025–2026). He has initiated and implemented numerous awareness-raising and capacity-building projects in the field of ICH, both in Finland and internationally.