CORE TEAM
Martin Seppälä
PhD. (Econ.), Partner, Chairman
Dr Martin Seppälä has a Ph.D.(Econ.) in strategic management from Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki and has worked as a lecturer and visiting professor in strategy and management in the Estonian Business School (EBS), Aalto University, Hanken Business School and SKEMA (CERAM) in the French Grande Ecole System. He has served as a board/advisory board member in many companies internationally. team
Martin has been working as a management consultant since 1999 – before Excedea in Andersen Consulting’s and Accenture’s strategy group. During the last 17 years, Martin has worked on growth and strategy issues with such companies as Nokia, HP, TeliaSonera, Nokian Tyres, Stockmann and Technopolis. Besides delivering longer projects on-site in Scandinavia and the Baltics, Martin has also worked in London and in markets throughout Europe, Russia and Asia. Martin has a wealth of experience in real estate and private equity investments, cross-border M&A and creating successful international growth strategies in a wide range of industries (including consumer goods and services, ICT, real estate investments, healthcare and manufacturing industry).
Mikael Orkomies
Senior Partner
Mikael Orkomies holds a M.Sc. in Industrial Management and Engineering from the Aalto University School of Science and Technology. Mikael’s consulting career began in 1998 at the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management. In 2000-2005 Mikael worked at Accenture as a strategy consultant in communications and high tech sector before moving on to establish a consulting company specializing on growth and internationalization.
During the years Mikael has worked both with large multinationals and SMEs; and with clients from e.g. ICT, service outsourcing, food industry, automotive and heavy machinery industries. Mikael has long experience from factory establishment projects in Europe, process rollouts in Asia and multi-country business opportunity assessments in Eastern Europe.
The common denominator in the projects has been the interest in growing abroad. As a result of the accumulated knowledge in internationalization, Mikael has been an advisor to several governmental agencies interested in attracting FDI as well as a frequent guest speaker in seminars focusing on growth.
Henrik Dagmalm
Partner, CEO Excedea Sweden
Henrik Dagmalm holds a Master of Laws (LL.M) degree from the University of Stockholm. Henrik has been a management consultant since 2006 and has primarily advised Swedish companies on international growth and public funding. His experience in the field spans from 25 successful international growth projects to 200 winning public funding projects related to international growth – all targeting Russia & CIS, Eastern Europe and Asia. Henrik is offering clients the value of accelerated and highly profitable international growth as well as reduced investment risk through grants and incentives. Henrik has project management experience in international growth from projects like feasibility studies, market strategy and partner searches.
Jaakko Ojanen
Associate Partner in Finland
Jaakko Ojanen is an experienced funding consultant who has worked with public funding projects since 2013. During this time, he has developed an extensive understanding of the requirements of both Finnish and international financing mechanisms.
Jaakko holds a master’s degree in Materials Science from Tampere University of Technology. He is an expert in developing and internationalising knowledge-intensive professional services, as well as combining clients’ international growth projects with public funding instruments.
Henri Norio
Partner
Henri Norio is an international growth consultant with over 13 years of experience in sales and consulting. He holds an M.Sc. in Economics and Finance from the University of Vaasa. Henri is an expert in adapting new business models on international markets. He has a strong track record of facilitating the success of Finnish companies internationally and driving their revenue growth in new export markets.
Viktor Reppo
Partner
Viktor Reppo holds economics degrees from Estonian Business School in Tallinn and Copenhagen Business Academy in Denmark.
Viktor has been helping his clients to realize their international growth ambitions for over 10 years. He has worked extensively in the markets of Europe, CIS, and Asia. Viktor is especially widely recognized as an expert on the markets of Russia and CIS. Viktor’s long-term clients include companies from the consumer goods, healthcare, ICT and manufacturing sectors.
Kim Kišenja
Partner
Jana Tserkasina
Partner, COO
Jana Tserkasina has business degrees from Estonian Business School and Tallinn Technical University.
Being experienced in internationalization projects management, planning and resourcing, Jana is responsible for all the international growth project deliveries at Excedea. Jana is also responsible for the daily operations of Excedea Estonia and the communication between 3 Excedea offices in Tallinn, Helsinki and Stockholm.
Simo Nieminen
Associate Partner
Simo Nieminen holds an MBA degree in International Business Management from the Aalto University School of Business. He has over 15 years of experience in sales, consulting, strategy, coaching, marketing, e-commerce, multicultural team management, entrepreneurship, market research, export, sourcing and funding. Simo has experience in working for both large corporations and SME companies in the US, the UK, China, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Estonia in various sectors including finance, ICT, manufacturing and retail specializing in international growth.
Peter Vikström
Associate Partner
Peter Vikström is an international growth and capital professional with an MBA degree in International Business Management from INSEAD and Copenhagen Business School. He has over 20 years of experience in growing companies, financing, and consulting. Peter has worked with small, medium-sized and larger companies in various sectors like finance, ICT, med-tech, contract manufacturing, and retail specializing in international growth.
Caroline Aruoja
Project Leader
Caroline Aruoja is an experienced manager with a focus on innovation and accelerating growth. She has experiences from both the private as well as the public sector, related to technology transfer, R&D, and business acceleration. Caroline has worked and studied in five different countries and enjoys working with international projects. She has graduated Cum Laude from MA European Studies from Maastricht University (Netherlands) with a focus on economic policy, after having finished BA Economics and Politics at the University of York (UK).
Kai Krashevski
Associate Partner
Kai Krashevski is a public funding specialist. She has a Master of Arts degree in Philology from the Tartu University and has studied in the MBA program at Estonian Business School.
Kai has been involved in public funding projects since 2011. She has a thorough understanding of Estonian grants and can also support clients with international grants. Kai has consulted companies of different sizes in public funding matters and supported them in winning public funding so they could implement their development projects. She has supported the development of shared service centers (Ramirent, AGA, Fujitsu) and has a strong B2B sales track record.
Jessica Kehayes
Ille Metsla
Senior Associate
Ille Metsla has studied Management and Marketing in TalTech, Estonia. She has been involved in the field of business consulting since 2008, most of it in the largest counselling network of Estonia (county development centers) consulting start-ups in business plan preparation.
Ille has also managed the EU funded small business growth program, which contributed to the growth of small enterprises in Harju County through joint activities, increasing efficiency of management and production and finding partners. This meant organizing development programs and various contact trips to export markets for company managers.
Julia Dmitrieva
Senior Associate
Julia Dmitrieva holds a Bachelor’s degree in English Philology from Tallinn University. Julia is responsible for project support in international growth and public funding projects and is active in contact establishing and data gathering.
Antonio Lustrissimi
Associate
Antonio Lustrissimi has studied Environmental Engineering and Management in TalTech, Estonia. He is responsible for data collection and analysis in international growth projects, as well as identifying funding opportunities for businesses specializing in market size evaluation, customer demand and competition mapping. He has an international working experience on sustainability as a researcher and product developer in business applications mainly in the software industry.
Zaur Shukurov
Associate
Zaur Shukurov received his bachelor degree in the field of Energy Engineering from the Azerbaijan State Oil and Industry University and is now doing his master´s in TalTech, Estonia in Environmental Engineering and Management. Zaur has experience in data gathering, partner and client search, and project support.
Ville Hedman
Public Funding Associate
Ville Hedman holds a B.Sc in accounting and finance from the University of Vaasa and has taken business courses in the University of Luxembourg. During his studies he worked in Nordea Bank. He has a solid track record of preparing funding applications and recognizing funding opportunities for companies.
Lauri Böök
Public Funding Associate
Lauri Böök holds a LL.M in Law and Technology from Tilburg University and has specialized in IPR. He has a solid track record of preparing funding applications and recognizing funding opportunities for companies.
Liudmila Gonchar
Project Leader
Liudmila Gonchar holds M.Sc in Management from Dublin Institute of Technology (Ireland) and a Degree in Economics and Management from Belarusian State Economic University (Belarus). Liudmila Gonchar has 9+ years of international project management experience focusing on international growth, market entries, new business developments. Her main markets are the CIS countries and Northern European markets. Liudmila has a large-scale Chinese experience with a full-time onsite presence in a sourcing project covering +100 factory inspection as well as a number of other similar smaller projects in China. She is highly proficient in research and analysis of business/market data.
________________________________________
REGIONAL EXPERTS
Johan Hackman
Senior Advisor, Finland
Johan Hackman has led projects across a wide variety of industries such as Machine building and technology, FMCG and Retail, Automotive, High-tech and Med-tech. He has supported global leaders in developing best-in-class solutions in projects such as supplier evaluation, benchmarking, operational due diligence, simulation of production sites, inventory management and design of global logistics networks.
Johan has been involved in consulting in China since 2004 and has had a steady presence in Asia since 1987 through both academic work and business relations. The majority of his work has been in Greater China gaining his experience in the region. Over the years, he has accumulated extensive expertise in supply chain management, sourcing and operations.
In addition to Asia, Johan has a long experience of working in other emerging economies, including Russia and Eastern Europe.
Johan holds an M.Sc. In Economics from Åbo Akademi University in Finland and has also studied at the Chinese University of HK, National Taiwan Normal University, Central Institute of Nationalities Beijing and Pacific Asian Management Institute University of Hawaii.
Bin Sun
Senior Advisor, China
Bin Sun is a Chinese national with a Master’s degree from the French Grande Ecole system. Bin is an experienced advisor for Western companies in the Asia-Pacific region and for Chinese investment companies active in Europe.
Joseph Cheung (PhD)
Senior Advisor, China
Joseph Cheung is a Chinese national with PhD from Beijing’s Tsinghua University and an MBA from London Business School. Dr. Cheung has not only advised several foreign companies on how to do enter the Hong Kong and Chinese market, but with the help of his wide personal network supported them to start business activities in China. Dr. Cheung also teaches at the School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University’s IMBA programme on Doing Business in China and Entrepreneurial Management.
Khanh Doan
Senior Advisor, Vietnam
Khanh Doan is a Vietnamese national, with a Master’s degree in Economics from Linköping University in Sweden. Khanh is an owner of a company, which imports handmade home decoration from Asia and Africa to Europe. Previously Khanh worked six years as a marketing executive in Singaporean FMCG company and Japanese cosmetics & pharmaceutical industry company.
Karsten Loemker
Country Manager in Germany
Karsten Loemker is a German national with a LLB degree. Karsten started off his career as a solicitor but has during the years moved more and more towards management consulting. As a result, today Karsten is fluent in both supporting companies in growth strategy outside their home markets and in expansion and restructuring related legal matters.
Zeljko Pavic (PhD)
Senior Advisor, Western Balkans
Zeljko Pavic is a Croatian market research and analysis specialist. Zeljko has 16 years of experience in commercial and scientific research. He has executed several dozens of market research projects for clients in various industries.
Mika Ruotsalo
Senior Advisor, Poland and CEE
Mika Ruotsalo is a Finnish national with long construction metals and financial services experience. Mika has worked for US, Finnish and Austrian companies across Eastern Europe in senior management positions focusing on a market expansion.
Minko Mihailov
Senior Advisor, Bulgaria
Minko Mihailov is a Bulgarian real estate and construction professional. He is experienced in financing and leading several major property development deals in different parts of Bulgaria as well as in helping foreign companies and investors.
Ivo Urbanovics
Senior Advisor, Latvia
Ivo Urbanovics is a Latvian national with an international business background. He has advised several Scandinavian companies to establish themselves in Latvia. He has also assisted many Latvian companies to develop international sales. Ivo is specialized in the development of innovative start-ups. He is experienced in the IT outsourcing, food and manufacturing industries.
Rokas Tamosiunas
Senior Advisor, Lithuania
Rokas Tamosiunas is a Lithuanian national with a Master’s degree in Business Management from Vilnius University. Has a strong M&A experience. Rokas is an IT consulting professional, entrepreneur and active NGO member.
Martti Rautiala
Senior Advisor, Sweden
Martti Rautiala is a Swedish and Finnish citizen, living in Stockholm, Sweden. He has an economic education, and has been working as a management consultant in various Nordic regions. Martti is specialized in market entries and has represented numerous companies in entering the Swedish and other Nordic markets.
Nils Ole Krogstad
Senior Advisor, Norway
Nils Ole Krogstad is a Norwegian national holding MSc in Industrial Economics from the University of Stavanger (UiS) and a Master of Management degree from the Norwegian School of Management (BI). Nils Ole is an expert in strategy, business development, M&A, and corporate finance. He has a wide international experience from working in Africa for several years and establishing businesses in the Nordics, Baltics, and India.
Ali Munif Yegenaga
Senior Advisor, Turkey
Ali is a Turkish national who graduated from the University of Leeds and holds a Textile Engineering diploma. He is an expert in developing export sales and investments in the emerging markets. Ali is the owner and CEO at Unipole Forest Products and has expertise in wood preservation and use of wooden poles.