Silja has always been active in many projects and actions related to maritime and youth subjects. She thrives on international exchange: and her own personal background is rather multicultural, being German, married to an Englishman, living in Spain for over 20 years and working with an international team in a European context. 

She is a Director of Sea Teach, a maritime training company based in Cala D'or, Mallorca, which specialises in small group and individualised training on its own boats or on customers own boats. It has run several highly successful EU projects which set out to find solutions around recognition problems of professional skipper qualifications and around training of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The company is part of the prestigious Blue Generation Project, which aims to bring unemployed and undecided youth into the Blue Economy by directly visiting hundreds of school classes through working closely with employers.  

Sea Teach also aims to bring more environmental issues into its work and is currently building a wide regional network to work on subjects such as Ocean Litter and Ships waste management.