Marko Ahtisaari (born 1969 in

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the capital, primate, and most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of Uusimaa in southern Finland, and has a population of . The city ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

) is a Finnish technology entrepreneur and musician. Ahtisaari has been CEO and co-founder of two technology companies:

Dopplr Dopplr was a free social networking service, launched in 2007, that allowed users to create itineraries of their travel plans and spot correlations with their contacts' travel plans in order to arrange meetings at any point on their journey. Addi ...

(acquired by Nokia in 2009) and Sync Project (acquired by Bose in 2018). After the acquisition of Dopplr, Ahtisaari was executive vice president of Design at Nokia and later a Director's Fellow at the MIT Media Lab. He is a composer, bassist and singer in the band Construction.

Early life

Marko Ahtisaari is the son of

Martti Ahtisaari Martti Oiva Kalevi Ahtisaari (; born 23 June 1937) is a Finnish politician, the tenth president of Finland (1994–2000), a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and a United Nations diplomat and mediator noted for his international peace work. Ahtisa ...

, a former UN diplomat and President of Finland, and Eeva Ahtisaari, the former First Lady of Finland. He attended

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, where he studied philosophy, economics and music.

Work

Ahtisaari's business career started at a new media company Satama Interactive in 1998. In 2002 Ahtisaari left the company to join its biggest client,

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...

. He was appointed Director of Design strategy in 2005. In 2006, he left Nokia and joined his former boss, Nokia CEO

Pekka Ala-Pietilä Pekka Ala-Pietilä, January 13.1957, Asikkala, is CEO and co-founder of Blyk. He was also President of Nokia Corporation (1999–2005) and President of Nokia Mobile Phones (1992–1998). He holds an honorary Doctor in Technology from Tampere Uni ...

to start an advertisement-supported mobile network

Blyk Blyk was an ad-supported mobile phone network that offered text messages and customer-to-customer calls, with a capped amount of usage being free of charge. It targeted young people and had offices in Finland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdo ...

. In 2007, Ahtisaari became the founding investor and CEO of online business travel startup

, which was acquired by

in 2009. Between February 2009 September 2013 Ahtisaari was Head of Product Design at Nokia. In January 2012, he was appointed as a member of the Nokia leadership team. Ahtisaari announced his resignation from Nokia when Microsoft acquired Nokia's devices business in September 2013. Ahtisaari is co-editor with Laura Houseley of Out of the Blue: The Essence and Ambition of Finnish Design (Gestalten 2014) a survey of Finnish Design. Ahtisaari and Finnish entrepreneur and journalist Jaakko Tapaninen co-authored the book 10x Finland (Teos 2015) for the Finnish-speaking audience on the impact of digitalisation on a country like Finland. The book is based on original interviews with international persons of interest in technology and media including Joi Ito, Stefana Broadbent, Tyler Brule, danah boyd, Joshua Cooper Ramo, and Bret Easton Ellis. In its review the Finnish National daily Helsingin Sanomat called 10x Finland "one of the most interesting books written in Finnish on the effects of digitalisation." Ahtisaari contributed the essay "Intelligent Travel" to the Freesouls project.

Music

Ahtisaari's band Skizm - together with percussionist Mauro Refosco, trumpetist

Michael Leonhart Michael Leonhart (born April 21, 1974) is an American jazz trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist. Solo career In 1992 Leonhart was honored with the first Grammy Award for outstanding high school musician in the US (he attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia ...

, bassist Dan Cooper, singer Carolyn Kelley, and drummer Tobias Gebb - received a NARAS Grammy Showcase Award for new artists.

References

External links

*http://ahtisaari.typepad.com/about.html *http://ahtisaari.typepad.com/moia/2005/12/music_for_airpl.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Ahtisaari, Marko 1969 births Living people Musicians from Helsinki Finnish people of Norwegian descent Finnish male musicians Nokia people Columbia College (New York) alumni Children of national leaders Finnish chief executives