European Young Leaders (#EYL40)

In addition to her role as a biochemist, Suvi is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sulapac, a company that develops innovative and fully biodegradable wood-based packaging. Named one of Helsinki’s hottest start-ups in 2018 by WIRED magazine, Sulapac products offer a viable alternative to the plastic packaging most commonly used for food, commodities and cosmetics. A former researcher at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, Suvi holds a PhD in biomaterials and is committed to halting the build-up of microplastics in the world. In 2017, Sulapac was awarded Europe’s first founder’s prize for the circular economy, going on to win both the Green Alley Award and the Sustainable Beauty Award in Paris that same year.

Mika Mäkeläinen was the Founder of Taivas + helvetti, the Co-Founder of Rainmaker Business and a Partner at Boardman, the leading network of corporate governance specialists in Finland. He was also a member of the Finnish Association of Professional Board Members and sat on the board of Sifter Capital. He was the former CEO of GTW Group, a management company that regroups a wide range of companies specialising in diverse fields, such as sales, consultancy, web services, e-commerce, marketing and IT services. In recognition of his work as a successful entrepreneur, Mika was named the Young Entrepreneur of the Year in Finland and among the 100 most influential opinion leaders in Finland.

Mika left us too soon in spring 2022.

Pia Henrietta Moon is the Co-Founder and CEO of Carbo Culture, a climate technology company on a mission to remove one billion tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere annually. Carbo Culture removes carbon by converting CO₂ from plant waste into a stable form of carbon, also generating renewable energy and carbon credits in the process. Carbo Culture’s breakthrough carbon removal solution solves key scalability challenges of the carbon removal industry. Her prior experience includes growing two organisations in ed-tech: Mehackit, which provides creative technology courses for youth to experience building technology, and Rails Girls, a global non-profit that organised open-source weekend workshops for women to dive into the world of technology. Given her management expertise, Moon was the youngest board member of a publicly traded company in Finland, YE International. Named a Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst, she is also an alumna of Stanford’s StartX founder community.

Born in Uzbekistan and educated at Aarhus University in Denmark, her unifying work is rooted in a corporate career in global shipping with Maersk Line and over 15 years advancing political participation and the employment of international talent, spouses and minorities in the Nordics, as well as youth Global Dignity programmes from Finland to Uzbekistan. With last eight years of shaping and guiding meaningful conversations and inclusion and belonging programs and initiatives, she has shown in practice that results and action happen where people, power and possibility meet. Her work ranges from citizen initiatives and municipal experimentation projects, to uniting entrepreneurs and investors in Europe and Central Eurasia around talent attraction and the urban–rural divide. Kamilla has written op‑eds,  supported policy makers on inclusion and employment, co-created media campaigns on cultural diversity in working life, and hosted the Finnish‑language podcast Suomi+ as a non‑native speaker to challenge accent bias and widen who is heard.  She believes that if we connect the humans first, the strategy will follow – turning big words like ‘European values’ into everyday choices in companies, communities and institutions that decide what kind of future we build together.