Aalto alumni network board 2023

Chair of the Aalto alumni network board

Mia Sirkiä M.Sc. (Economics) from Aalto University. Mia is the CEO and partner in the private equity fund Saari Partners. Previously, she has been a partner in the advertising agency Hasan & Partners, responsible for B2B marketing. Prior to that, Mia did various business development projects, product marketing, new service development and Go-To-Market projects at Nokia. Mia is on the boards of Teknoware and Navix and the chairman of the board of Bo LKV.

Hannu Martola, (Vice Chair) M.Sc in engineering and an EMBA from Aalto University is President & CEO of Detection Technology Plc. At current he is a chairman of GPX Group Oy (Galena Pharma) and a member of ENICS AG Board of Directors. Previously he has worked in various managerial positions and as a President & CEO of VTI Technologies Inc. He has served in a number of startup and scaleup companies Board of Directors as a member and a chairman. Hannu has a long time link to Aalto University network through his earlier positions at Helsinki University of Technology student union, HOAS housing foundation, PTK Guild and KAUTE foundation.

Kullah Anderson, MBA (international) from Aalto University School of Business, currently serves as the Head of Operations at MaaS Global Oy, the maker of the award-winning Whim app. Previously he has held posts at Jolla Oy, Nokia Corp., and Kienbaum Unternehmungsberatung, among others. Kullah currently acts as the Chair of the Aalto MBA Association.

Ossi Leikola, MSc. in Tech (Engineering Physics) from Aalto University and MBA from INSEAD. He is Executive Vice President at Nordea, where he has over 17 years’ experience in different leadership positions, most lately as Head of Operations. He has also been Managing Director at Scalepoint Technologies Oy and Metos NV. Before that he was a consultant at McKinsey & Company. During his studies Ossi was Fuksi Captain at the Guild of Physics as well as the chairman of Helsinki University of Technology Student Union and National Union of University Students in Finland.

Markus Nuotto (M.Sc. (Tech) from Aalto University) has been a member of the Alumni Board since 2021. He is currently the VP of Sales Operations at Aiven. He has worked in the industry for more than ten years, mainly focusing on technology startups, e.g., in 2011-2014 at drawElements Oy, which became part of Google in 2014. Markus has been an active member of the Finnish startup community since 2009. He is one of the founders of Aalto Entrepreneurship Society (Aaltoes) and Startup Sauna and has been a board member of the Startup Foundation.

Sofi Perikangas, M.A. in Collaborative and Industrial Design, is a consultant in strategic service design and a PhD researcher focusing on design and management of co-production for public services. Sofi has a solid background in design in IT field and AI start-ups, as well as health and welfare sector. They are a former chair of the TOKYO student association and a former board member of the AYY.

Mikko J. Salminen, M.Sc. in engineering from Aalto University is a leading innovation consult at Spinverse, a board member of Kauniainen City and a deputy member of TEK. He has held several startup positions, Chief Strategy Officer at Nokia Networks, Vice President of a business unit at Vaisala and Chief Technology Officer at Elisa. Mikko has been involved in the Alumni Club of the Electric Club since the 1980s and he is the Alumnus of the Year 2021 of the Aalto University School of Electrical Engineering.

Riitta Silvennoinen,  Lic.Sc. (Tech.) from Aalto University School of Chemical Engineering, is currently working as the Head of Energy Transition Business at St1 creating new sustainable business in energy transition together with wide network of partners. Previously she has been working at Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra leading multiple circular economy projects in education and industry as well as in various tasks in management, consulting and process engineering in chemical industry projects at St1 and AFRY.