I have a PhD in corporate environmental management and a MSc degree in biology. I am currently on research leave from a university lecturer position at JSBE where I have taught courses on sustainability transition and sustainable business strategies and models while doing my research. My previous work experience includes working as a researcher in the School of Forest Sciences at the University of Eastern Finland as well as at the Finland Futures Research Centre at the University of Turku. I have been a visiting scholar at the UC Berkeley at Energy and Resources Group (2008–2009, 2011) and at the University of Graz at Department of Environmental System Sciences for several periods in 2017-2023. I also have an extensive teaching experience, with a previous career as a natural sciences teacher and a degree in adult education.
My expertise lies in the area of innovations for sustainability, especially on sustainable business models and value co-creation. In my work I draw on transdisciplinary theoretical premises, for example, combining management approaches with research of systemic transitions. I have a specific knowledge in the field of collaborative business models and participative foresight. I have applied mixed methods approaches (combining quantitative and qualitative methods), but my methodological expertise lies in qualitative, future-oriented research approaches. I am interested in the interplay between societal and natural systems, as well as between variety of actors in society including understanding on power, change needs, and conflicts of actors at different levels of societal system, to facilitate sustainability transition.
I position myself as a sustainable management scholar focusing on transition in renewable natural resources-based fields, the forest and forest-based sector in particular, and more recently in the agricultural and food value chains. In principle, my research examines what type of value co-creation, actor relations and dialogue, sustainable business models and managemet are needed (in future) for supporting innovations for sustainability and, by extension, the sustainability transition.
