Elias Pihaja
elias.pihaja@pories.fi
Finland
Elias studies marketing at the Turku School of Economics, and at the same time, he’s the chairman of the board at Pori Entrepreneurship Society. Elias finds entrepreneurship superbly interesting, and he is a co-founder of a media company located in Turku, Finland. In addition to entrepreneurship, he’s also interested in internationality. He’s keen on learning new, and believes that connections to different cultures are the greatest way to learn new perspectives. Elias has his background in sports where the competitive environment taught him to work hard if the aim is on success. However, he’s a real team player who never lets anyone down.
Beza Gebrekidan
Ethiopia
Beza has a decade of experience in the renewable energy and energy efficiency sector, focusing on business development, analytics, and project implementation. She has successfully assisted negotiations of contract for wind farm project implementation during her period with GIZ. As a business development manager at dVentus, she specializes in business development strategies to craft and offer unique solutions to emerging markets and especially to the African energy challenge by spearheading the undertaking of a business case analysis for utilities across Africa and especially Ethiopia she has equipped dVentus with an excellent marketing instrument and helped the local utility with a roadmap for an efficient distribution system. She is also a Mandela Washington Fellowship Alumni of 2017 from the Energy Track studying at the University of California, Davis and has an international experience working with GIZ on large-scale renewable energy project implementations. Beza holds a Master's degree in Economics from Unity University specializing in energy business analytics and entrepreneurship.
Mika Turpeinen
mika.turpeinen@swanmanagement.net
Ethiopia / Finland
Mika is the founder and general manager of Swan Management Plc, an Ethiopian based company focusing on complex energy and environmental projects. The mission of Swan Management Plc is to build entrepreneurial mindset within companies and development actors to create innovative, sustainable and climate friendly environment for prosperous future.
The opportunities Mika has gained while working globally with huge multinational companies, with many start-ups, both in most advanced countries as well as in most poor ones, has shaped his understanding about our extremely diverse planet – we need coopetition; collaboration between competitors, for the mutual benefits.
Yemisrach Yetneberk
Ethiopia
Originally trained as an architect, Yemisrach Yetneberk is the co-founder of an illustration based company called Laughing Gas Design PLC in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
LGD is a company that has been working in the areas of illustration, animation, and graphic design for the past five years. It has worked with various international and local organizations and individuals by participating in their endeavors to present information to their audiences in an easy to understand and memorable manner. A picture is indeed worth a thousand words.
The multitude of clients LGD has had the privilege to work with has helped shape its vast experience resulting in solution-oriented views, flexibility, an approach to challenges from different angles, knowledge on local and international contexts and an unflinching belief that a picture is superior to words.