CEO and Founder
Teppo Turkki, diplomat and Counsellor for Science, Technology and Innovation in the Embassy of Finland in Seoul and Tokyo from 2016 to 2021, and a Representative of Finland in Taiwan from 2104 to 2016. He was a director (2008-2012) and Sitra Fellow (2012-2018) at Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra.
Autumn 2021 Teppo was invited to join as a Executive Advisor to Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting’s Smart City Institute Japan. In November 2021 he was also invited to join as a Policy Advisor to South Korean Development Institute KDI’s Open Government and Innovation Lab (OGI Lab). He has a position as an Executive Advisor in Finland’s Ministry of Finance AuroraAI program.
Teppo has written books, strategy foresight reports and articles about contemporary East Asia, Japan and Korean peninsula focusing on the development of the Indo-Pacific. He has been a Visiting Researcher at the Waseda University in Tokyo (2003–2005) and was in 2004 invited to be a Research Fellow in the GLOCOM, a Center for Global Communications think tank of the International University of Japan. Teppo has also been a Visiting Scholar at Institute of International Relations of National Chengchi University in Taipei Taiwan from 2012 to 2014.
He has diverse experience in various sectors of Finnish society and is a well-known author and an influential media person who has worked as an expert in many different universities, institutes, and state administrations, both in Finland and abroad
Earlier Teppo has also been director in the University of Art and Design Helsinki (2005-2008), today Aalto University, and an Executive Adviser for the executive management of the biggest Finnish Telecom Company, Elisa Corporation (1998-2003). From 1996 to 1998, he was a member of Sitra’s Research Council.
He has a Master of Social Sciences degree in communication from University of Tampere and has previously studied also psychology and neurophysiology at the University of Helsinki.