Build a sustainable future

Lauri Järvilehto, PhD, is a Professor of Practice at Aalto University and Co-Director of Aalto Ventures Program. He is a serial entrepreneur, philosopher, author, musician and a Sherlock Holmes fan. He is the founder of the Finnish Academy of Philosophy and serves on the Boards of Directors of Unicef Finland and the Finnish Academy of Philosophy. He has written several bestselling books on thinking and learning and is an active public speaker worldwide.

Jesse is a serial entrepreneur and veteran in Fashion Manufacturing and eCommerce. He is also the former CEO and Founder of Factory Finder, an online platform that helped European Fashion designers to work with sustainable factories in Vietnam and China. Jesse is the first person ever to be chosen for both Forbes Europe Under 30 and Forbes Vietnam 30 Under 30, in the same year (2020).

Ilja Riekki serves as a Head of Innovation and Partnerships at Aalto Ventures Program, the entrepreneurship program of Aalto University, one of the leading innovation universities in Europe. He’s leading a team responsible of growing entrepreneurial mindset, motivation, and skills within researchers, to accelerate impact and innovations arising from research as well as building a scalable pre-incubation platform to leverage the entrepreneurial and impact potential of extended Aalto community.

Ilja Riekki holds a Master`s degree in education and has been previously working in consulting, trade and exports in Shanghai, education exports and professional trainings at Chinese market in a startup and with food and retail market in Finland. In Aalto University he has been working in a Ministry of Education initiative to create ways to integrate entrepreneurship education to different disciplines and programs and to find the best practices and methods to facilitate learning of entrepreneurial, innovation and design skills within students and educators. Furthermore he`s building a global network of entrepreneurship education providers and stakeholders to develop the future of entrepreneurship education and innovation together.

Joni has advised hundreds of startups, investors, corporations and others working professionally with innovations. In his day job he focuses on helping startups find investors, clients and other partners in the smart & clean sector, especially in the Nordics and Baltics. His free-time activities include creating and managing Ecosystem.fi, an open list of over 100 investors, accelerators and startup-friendly corporations with easy shortlisting functionality, as well as Startup Helsinki Slack, an open network of 1 000 people interested in startups and the main Helsinki area.

Before becoming a professional startup advisor and connector he built digital platform startups, studied startup ecosystem development and international business, and worked in 30 positions from door to door sales to key account management (1M/year) and gardening to teaching. He has also been an entrepreneur for nearly 20 years, employing at most 30 people at a time in fields as varying as his day job history.