Research
Currently working as an Associate Professor at the University of Vaasa in Finland. I used to work as a Scientist at the Qatar Computing Research Institute, Hamad Bin Khalifa University. I’ve also got an Adjunct Professor affiliation with the Turku School of Economics at the University of Turku. My dissertation focused on strategic challenges of platform startups. I’m currently focused on analytics and user personas, including Survey2Persona and Automatic Persona Generation (APG) which are systems to generate personas from survey research data and online analytics data data (YouTube, Facebook, Google Analytics), respectively. I also ran a Kone foundation-funded research project on the societal impact of machine decision-making.
Business
Got more than 10 years of experience in digital marketing as a part-time (digital) marketing manager (and PPC consultant) in Elämyslahjat.fi, an ecommerce company. During this time, the company has increased sales from 100k€ to more than 3M€ mainly by using Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, email marketing, SEO, and conversion optimization. I occassionally consult startups and small companies on digital marketing, so be in touch if you’re interested in digital marketing consultation.
Teaching
I love teaching. Have taught digital marketing at four different universities (Turku, Oulu, Helsinki, and Vaasa), services marketing, and startup marketing. My teaching philosophy relies on hands-on focus, combining theoretical and practical insights to help students understand what matters in a specific domain.
My students have won several international competitions, including:
- Google Online Marketing Challenge (European Business Award, 2013)
- Google Online Marketing Challenge (European Business Award, 2016)
- Facebook Global Digital Challenge (2015)
Some of my teaching material is available at Slideshare, mostly in Finnish.
Mentors
Professor Rami Olkkonen, Turku School of Economics, Finland
Professor Jim Jansen, Qatar Computing Research Institute, Qatar
Life in pictures
- I like playing floorball.
- I have a niece who is six years old (probably older by the time you read this!).
- I used to work in Disneyland Paris.
- I sometimes teach using memes.
- Finland is the country of thousands of lakes.
More pics in Facebook.
Contact
joolsa(at)utu.fi