Contact

Noren Oy
Y: 2740559-3

Mikonkatu 13 A, 4th floor
00100 Helsinki, Finland

Mikko Leskelä,
CEO

mikko.leskela@noren.fi
+358(0)50 569 9656

Who are we?

Noren’s core team consists of experienced strategy consultants and social science researchers. We complement the team with external experts according to the topic at hand.

Annakerttu Aranko

annakerttu.aranko@noren.fi

+358(0)50 437 0186

Annakerttu works at the nexus of culture and strategy, and has collaborated with some of the Finland’s leading companies in identifying growth opportunities and corporate strategy.

Annakerttu believes that winning organisations have the ability to identify and interpret the changes in society, culture, technology and business as a connected whole, and synthesise these data points into new value creation opportunities. She aims to transfer this ability by working in co-creation with clients.

Annakerttu holds a M.Econ. in international design business management from Aalto University School of Business.

Mikko Leskelä

mikko.leskela@noren.fi

+358(0)50 569 9656

Mikko has 15 years of experience in business development, corporate strategy, business design and M&A. He connects financial and processes modeling with deep human insight, and gets the biggest thrills from recognizing and empirically testing new business opportunities. Mikko’s work often aims at creating full Go/No-go analyses for new growth opportunities.

As a consultant, Mikko has been leading projects across a variety of industries, including media, healthcare, construction, insurance, energy, technology, aviation, logistics, and music.

Mikko holds a Master’s degree in Finance from the Aalto University School of Business, and a Master’s degree in Theology from Helsinki University.

Pertti Pitsinki

pertti.pitsinki@noren.fi

+358(0)500 560 723

Pertti is a pioneer in applying participatory and co-creation methods in business development. He has over 15 years of experience in developing business and services for both Finnish and international clients.

He has been developing the participatory methodologies with the focus on better involvement of the customers, organisations, and other stakeholders in solving complex business problems and the implementation of new strategies in design processes.

He’s background is in digital service and product design, and he’s an experienced facilitator, visual thinker and designer, with focus on teaching and learning by doing.

Linda Sivander

linda.sivander@noren.fi

+358(0)40 844 9967

As an anthropologist Linda is motivated by researching different social worlds and societal phenomena. By applying ethnographic methods and theoretical understanding based on the social sciences in business development Linda challenges organizations to question customary ways of thinking about customers and people’s behavior.

As a strategy consultant Linda has worked with various themes, shedding light on the cultural worlds of electricity, housing and mobility, among others. Linda holds M.Soc.Sc. in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Helsinki.

Tuomo Ketola

tuomo.ketola@noren.fi

+358(0)40 861 9305

Tuomo has over 20 years of experience in developing services and transforming businesses based on a human centred approach. In his work, he has been able to apply his extensive background in cultural research and business science. One example of this is his contribution to the creation of service design approach and methodology in the first two service design agencies in Finland.

His true passion is to help clients to apply new, more productive and effective ways to solve their business challenges. Tuomo also has experience from a leadership position, when he was in charge of customer and service development in a 100M€+ company.

Heini-Emilia Saari

heini-emilia.saari@noren.fi

+358(0)40 533 9454

Heini-Emilia believes that successful strategy work recognises the situatedness of value creation in the dynamic social and material worlds people make and inhabit. At Noren she brings her unique interdisciplinary expertise to projects translating emerging cultural shifts into strategic opportunities, and has contributed to projects on housing, mobility and communication services, as well as employee benefit systems.

Prior to joining Noren, Heini-Emilia worked in urban development, strategy consulting, and architecture and city planning.

She holds two Master’s degrees, in architecture and in design management, and she is also pursuing a PhD in Human Geography and Urban Studies at the London School of Economics. In addition, she continues to explore innovative spatial design praxis as the co-founder of Wanderlust.

Saara Sulonen

saara.sulonen@noren.fi

+358(0)50 555 8343

Saara studies changing markets and business environments from the perspective of strategy and business modeling. Saara’s strength is realizing the business value of understanding cultural and organizational phenomena and recognizing its business applications.

Saara has deep knowledge of hotel, restaurant and travel industries as well as experience from private equity. At Noren, Saara has recently worked with e.g. energy, real estate, and travel industries.

Saara has a master’s degree in engineering from Aalto University’s Information networks degree program. In addition, Saara has completed a strategic management program at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Matti Hassinen

matti.hassinen@noren.fi

+358(0)400 842 131

Matti combines the power of statistical research with the depth of qualitative methods. He believes that bringing the two together is the best way to crystallise the most relevant to a company’s business.

As a social psychologist, Matti delves into the role of social change at a group level and the impact of group-identification for an individual. Prior to Noren, he gained experience at an innovation consultancy by working for Finnish organisations, media corporations and international clients in advertising research and customer insight projects.

Matti has a master’s degree in social sciences (M.Soc.Sc.) from the University of Helsinki, and in addition to social psychology, he has studied economics.

Arno Aranko

arno.aranko@noren.fi

+358 (0)40540 0520

As a sociologist, Arno looks at contemporary phenomena as socially constructed thought-processes and the reciprocal interactions of individuals. He mixes qualitative understanding with quantitative statistical query to provide a robust and multifaceted analysis.

Arno has prior experience both as an inhouse and a freelance consultant digging through human-centric data. In Noren, he works as a methods expert, analyst, and a result-oriented insight builder.

Prior to joining Noren, Arno has gained extensive experience in research, in which he has converted hypotheses into test settings.

Hilja Aunela

hilja.aunela@noren.fi

+358 (0)44 971 3159

Hilja is an anthropologist (M.Soc.Sc.) who helps companies and non-profits to understand emerging values, needs, and behaviours in a changing world.

As a consultant, she has collaborated with Nordic companies in various fields, including health & wellbeing, financial services and security, and work-life in different strategy and innovation projects.

Her interests span a wide variety of disciplines, topics, and spheres of life, and besides Finland, she has studied and worked in Portugal and Mozambique.

Juuli Hilska

juuli.hilska@noren.fi

+358 (0)45 112 2363

Juuli’s passion is to drive a human-centric approach through qualitative research in business and technology environments which to her creates true value. She thrives in innovative environments driven by the curiosity of understanding human behavior and ambition to look into the future. Juuli graduated with honors from Sociology in University of Helsinki and has worked e.g. with research impact and innovation, audio technology and digital strategy. Her professional experience includes working for NGOs, public sector and academia, as well as for technology companies and doing freelance consulting in the private sector. Besides Finland, she has done qualitative and user research in Sweden and India.

People are her business – and so her enthusiasm thrives when making individuals, teams and communities work together to solve tricky challenges with multidisciplinary approaches.

Karen Forsström

karen.forsstrom@noren.fi

+358 (0)40 768 5509

Karen is passionate about brining clarity to complex business environments. She believes in collaborative problem solving that connects and engages different stakeholders. Karen helps clients to create deep human and business insight-based solutions by applying scenario building, design, storytelling and visualization methods. Karen has an extensive experience in demanding projects combining human and business understanding as a management consultant in international companies such as Capgemini and Tieto, and SaaS startup as a growth lead. She has an educational background in art and media studies from Aalto University.

Jaakko Luomaranta

jaakko.luomaranta@noren.fi

+358 (0)40 831 9388

Jaakko renews strategizing to a guiding and adaptive process, that pays attention to and reacts to a constantly changing environment. He believes that a good strategy is grounded on unique insights about customers and the world. He helps organizations to make their strategy more humane, open and adaptive. Jaakko holds a M.Sc (tech) in strategy and works on a PhD on modern strategy work at the University of St. Gallen. Jaakko’s diverse toolbox has been built through work in category leading companies such as Accenture, Palmu, Gemic and Solita.

Susanna Tamminen

susanna.tamminen@noren.fi

+358 (0)50 576 3139

Susanna is an expert in strategic analysis that bases on versatile data. She is motivated to increase the role of human insights in business planning and decision-making, as she believes that the human science -based insights on changing business environments are the missing key that adds to the traditional strategic analysis. Before Noren, Susanna worked in the strategy team of a Finnish private health service provider, where she e.g. facilitated strategy processes, increased the use of customer and employee insights in business development, and developed new services. Susanna’s educational background is in Industrial Engineering & Management (M.Sc.Tech), where she focused on strategy, service design and software engineering. As an engineer, Susanna speaks fluent data & technology, and is inspired by the advancements of science.

Iida Korpiniitty

iida.korpiniitty@noren.fi

+358 (0)50 505 3229

Iida helps organisations foresee changes in their operational environments and understand on a deeper level what actually moves and motivates people. Iida draws human insight from the perspectives of both behavioral and social sciences. She is especially interested in the processes of learning and communication as well as the shifts in contemporary human values. Her strength is making sense of cultural transformations by analysing thick data and turning these insights into strategic opportunities.Previously Iida has worked as a research manager at Kulmia Insight and as an anthropological expert in different projects, mostly in housing and FMCG. She is also a doctoral researcher in the Doctoral Program in Social Sciences in University of Helsinki.