�鶹��ý

Over a long career, Ainomaija Haarla has held many demanding roles: executive posts in the forest industry, board seats at listed companies, business angel, startup adviser, and university professor.

Through her work in private equity, Haarla moved from the slow-moving corporate world into the dynamic startup scene and ultimately into a teaching post as a professor of entrepreneurship at a university.

“I’m a curious reformer and a doer,” Haarla says of her wide-ranging path.

“I’ve been motivated by learning new things and by working with young, smart, international people. I’ve been lucky to get interesting opportunities, and I’ve also turned down offers that didn’t appeal to me.”

In upper secondary school, Haarla gravitated toward mathematics and the natural sciences. In the 1970s, wastewater from the forest industry was a major problem she wanted to solve, which led to her studying forest products technology at what was then the Helsinki University of Technology in Otaniemi.

“As it turned out, I ended up doing very little with water purification, but my studies did open other interesting paths,” she says.

Her first job as a fresh Master of Science was at United Paper Mills - now UPM - in January 1979. Options in Finland’s forest industry were limited, since United had earlier acquired her spouse’s family company. A concrete alternative was moving to the United States, which nearly happened.

She spent about 20 years at UPM, parting ways only in the late 1990s when she realized how disruptive digitalization would be for the demand for UPM’s core products.

“Working in UPM’s strategy unit, I looked ahead and could already see digital media challenging the market for printing paper. The company didn’t react because profitability was good and it seemed there was time. I’ve always been about creating new products or entering new markets. When the change was brushed aside, I started to consider other career options.”

The career-change risk materialized 

In 1999, Haarla moved into sales and marketing at Valmet, which specialized in paper machines, fully aware of the risk involved with the career change: Valmet was merging with Rauma-Repola’s metal industry operations to form Metso.

The risk materialized when a leadership change eliminated her role. Her post at Valmet-Metso was brief, and she returned to the doctoral dissertation she had already begun. In 2003, she earned her Doctor of Science (Technology) degree in Otaniemi, focusing on competitiveness in the paper industry.

Earlier at UPM, she had completed an MBA with a thesis on synergies in mergers and acquisitions.

“My postgraduate studies have always been needs-based and goal-oriented. I haven’t pursued degrees just for their own sake; roles came along that required a broader foundation in strategy, especially M&A, law, and marketing. The dissertation equipped me to move into new industries as well.”

Nearing the end of her doctoral studies, Haarla returned to UPM and spent four years in Augsburg, Germany, to integrate the acquired company Haindl GmbH. Her MBA work on synergies proved valuable.

“Germany taught me, among other things, the importance of cultural integration in M&A. The acquisition turned out well, and that period was a career highlight.”

From private equity to startups 

Haarla’s interest in economics and finance dates back to upper secondary school, where she excelled in a national economics competition, and at HUT where she minored in industrial economics.

Her first exposure to private equity was a board role at Korona Invest, a fund management company founded in 2006 by her MBA classmate Vesa Lehtomäki and Pasi Lehtinen. She later became the company’s long-time board chair and an investor.

“I’ve progressed in an unconventional order - from private equity to startups - whereas usually it’s the other way around.”

Her board career in listed companies began at Neste Oil in 2005, just as the company was pivoting to biofuels; at first she was the board’s only bio expert. That period is also among the highlights of her career.

Her board work has continued across organizations and companies of various sizes, both listed and unlisted, and has also led to offers she turned down.

“I’ve declined board seats at listed companies when they couldn’t explain what expertise they needed from me.”

After her second stint at UPM, Haarla ran her consulting firm ProConsilium from 2007 to 2009, before being recruited as CEO of Technology Academy Finland.

“Technology Academy Finland was an extraordinary experience. I got close to innovations and technologies with major impacts on human well-being. The Millennium Prize winners were remarkably multitalented, truly unique individuals. That period also strengthened my international networks, which remain strong.”

From 2010 to 2015, Haarla served on the World Economic Forum’s faculty, supporting early-stage and youth-founded companies at the AMNC meeting known as “Summer Davos”. Hosting Linus Torvalds, one of two Millenium prize winners in 2012, at the 2012 Tianjin meeting was another career highlight.

Haarla began her startup journey in 2013 by joining the business angel network FiBAN. She has since worked with dozens of startups as an investor, adviser, or board member, and has trained at FiBAN Academy.

She highlights her role as board chair and investor at Gold & Green Foods (known for developing pulled oats), founded by serial entrepreneur Maija Itkonen.

“Working with Maija taught me a lot, even though the period was shorter than planned because the company was sold just 16 months after launch. Demand for the new product exploded, so we needed broader shoulders. Key lessons were courage, belief in your own work, impact and results, scaling, internationalization, and fast decision-making.”

Interdisciplinarity anchored her at Aalto 

After the Technology Academy, Haarla returned to Aalto University in 2013 - first to build a bioeconomy platform at the School of Chemical Engineering at the request of then-dean Janne Laine. She then helped develop Aalto’s entrepreneurship education and became a Professor of Practice at the School of Business, focusing on corporate entrepreneurship.

Earlier in her career, Haarla had thought she would never teach. But Aalto’s genuine interdisciplinarity - rare during her student days - was motivating, as were the visible results.

“For example, when entrepreneurship courses brought together students from multiple disciplines and countries, the quality of the coursework and the diversity of solutions rose markedly. The kind of competence bubble I saw early in my forest-industry career-where new solutions were hard to find because everyone had the same training and thought alike-was no longer there.”

Another strong example, she says, is Aalto’s CHEMARTS program, where chemists and designers explore bio-based materials together. Haarla has taught in the program.

Over her impressive career, Haarla has learned not only the power of interdisciplinarity but also the importance of courage, which she emphasizes to her students. Courage alone, however, is not enough: ambition and perseverance are also essential.

“In times of change and in development projects, you have to dare to make exceptional choices. They carry more risk, but they can also open many new possibilities. It is important to have the courage to pursue your dreams. Even if everything does not go according to plan, you have to be ready to work hard and change the course quickly  when needed“

Haarla officially retired a few years ago but has wound down her roles gradually and slowly. She remains active as an adviser to Evli Growth Partners, as the person responsible for a family office’s investments, as an adviser to the Aalto CHEM Innovators program and the Bioinnovation Center, and as a board member of the Friends of the Ateneum.

She encourages her peers to share their expertise and time with startups, and to mentor international professors and students by opening doors into Finnish society and business.

“People with long and diverse careers often have international contacts, perspective, and a practical sense of how things work when operating environments are disrupted. It’s rewarding. At the same time, we stay in the loop and keep learning new things.”

Text: Heidi Hammarsten.