Head of the European Design Upgrade 3.0 project

Project Manager at European Design Upgrade

Executive Producer, Urban Mill Innovation Platform; Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Aalto University Kari Mikkelä has over 30 years of academic, corporate, and NGO experience in learning, innovation, and business services. During his career, he has worked in and for several organizations in a variety of capacities specialized in innovation orchestration, user-driven RDI, and digitally-enabled services co-creation. He has overseen well over 200 successful initiatives. Among other things, he has orchestrated 15 years digital learning services and solutions development in the European University-Enterprise collaboration context. At the moment Kari acts as an Executive Producer of the Urban Mill – an Urban Innovation Co-working and Co-creation Platform in Espoo Innovation Garden and as an Ecosystem Advisor at Open Creative House Oy. Kari is co-founder of Urban Mill, which is a privately run public-private-people co-working and co-creation platform for urban innovations co-initiated by the City of Espoo and Aalto University

Kaarel Mikkin brings a depth of expertise in service design, customer experience, and product development to our development programme and hackathon. With a career that spans several decades, Kaarel has experienced both teaching theoretical concepts and applying them in practical, real-world projects for a diverse range of clients. His ability to merge theory with practical insights makes his sessions both educational and engaging. As a co-founder of Brand Manual, an Estonian service design and branding agency, Kaarel is committed to enhancing business competitiveness and customer-centricity. His skills in conducting thorough background research, defining corporate goals, and distinguishing a company’s market position are notable. A significant part of his work involves internal development: training organizations, engaging employees, and introducing innovative methodologies to develop companies and concepts from the inside out. In our programme, Kaarel will serve as a mentor during and after the skills upgrade section, offering valuable guidance to teams working on product and service innovation. His ongoing mentorship and support will be an enduring asset for participants, helping them to apply sustainable, user-centered design and innovation in their projects.

Margus is a Swiss-Swedish-Canadian-Estonian currently living in Tallinn, Estonia. He is a founding partner of Brand Manual, an international service design and branding agency. He has published numerous articles on service design in various publications and is the author of “How to have your cake and eat it too – an introduction to service design.” He is a frequent speaker at conferences and a guest lecturer at various universities. He was the catalyst behind SD4X, an executive level service design program, that was developed in cooperation with Tallinn University, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga and Maastricht University. His daily work focuses more and more on organisational change, both for private and public sector organisations. Design thinking and service design provides a strategic and holistic framework for re-considering how our organisations are built and structured, especially when faced with the constraints of decreasing funding, increasing demand for services and tougher competition for talent. He has experience working with clients from a broad range of industries, from brewing to banking to medical technology, from start-ups to industry incumbents as well a public sector organisations ranging from the Ministry of Education through vocational education to State Shared Services.

Juhani has overseen 150+ hackathons in over 20 countries with more than 200 organisations. His role in hackathons has included project lead, mentor, keynote speaker, and production support. Juhani has a Masters of Business Administration from the University of South Carolina, USA.

Miikka is a start-up/scale-up CEO and previous Corporate Business Unit leader with a strong track record of being able to drive top-line revenues and growth in an international business environment. He posesses experience leading large organisations as well as start-ups with the capability to build and lead high performing, innovative teams with a shared sense of purpose in a multinational, multimarket context. Hackathon and Open Innovation expert.

Jana is a PMP-certified Project Manager with over 15 years of experience in technical project management, process improvement, and team leadership. She is comfortable managing both small and large operations and projects and has an advanced understanding of the software lifecycle and IT industry. Jana holds degrees in Language and Literature from the University of South Carolina Honors College, USA.

Madde coordinates hackathon production, which encompasses event details planning, setting up and running and hosting the event, as well as onboarding participants, mentors and judges. Madde has been a part of organising more than 40 successful online, onsite and hybrid hackathons. Madelin holds a MSc. of Business Administration from Åbo Akademi University.

Aleksi is in charge of hackathon marketing & communications for hackathons. With 7 years of experience, he has published more than 20 hackathons, successfully acheiving visibility and recruitment metrics to suit clients’ objectives. Aleksi has a BSc. in International Business (BBA) from Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences.

Lyana provides support with general project tasks and marketing. She holds extensive experience in supporting innovation challenge projects and hackathons. Lyana received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Oulu, Finland.

Project Manager of Knowledge and Skill Hub for Construction Industry project 2023-2025 at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki. This RDI project combines three significant educational institutions in the field of the built environment in the Helsinki metropolitan area and brings together an internationally high-class network of universities, higher education institutions, and secondary education institutions. Here the construction industry refers to the “future construction industry”, which broadly encompasses various perspectives of the built environment such as the circular economy, digitalization and wellbeing. Main stakeholders and funders: The City of Helsinki, Metropolia UAS, Aalto University and Stadin AO.