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.

Piia Kuosmanen is a co-founder of Velbi, an early-stage startup that aims to build winning workplaces and eliminate burnouts. She has worked on four continents, helped build one of China's most successful startup ecosystems with Slush China, given speeches to live audiences ranging from a few people to tens of thousands, taught coding in the African countryside, been the elected leader of the Finnish national student movement, awarded Global Top 5 in NASA's Space Apps challenge, and won multiple national championships in ice hockey.

She has also suffered from and survived burnout, just like millions of her peers worldwide. This is why she now aims to solve that problem globally and for good with Velbi. At any given time, you'll likely find her practicing empathy and active listening, taking a restorative nap, drinking coffee, or reading a sci-fi book.

My Nguyen is a Global Partnerships Coordinator at Aalto Ventures Program – the entrepreneurship education program of Aalto University. She is specialized in working with various stakeholders from the startup ecosystems, through which My aims to bridge startup teams or entrepreneurial individuals with the wider startup community, to foster stronger growth for innovations.

Outside of work, My is also a Master’s student at Aalto University, specializing in International Business and Sustainability. Being at one of the leading innovation universities in Europe as both student and staff, My admires the entrepreneurial spirit that has been created at Aalto and aims to nurture it further in her daily work. 

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.