About Joni

Research

I work as a Scientist at the Qatar Computing Research Institute, Hamad Bin Khalifa University.  I’ve also got a postdoctoral research affiliation with the Turku School of Economics. My dissertation focused on strategic challenges of platform startups. I’m currently focused on Automatic Persona Generation (APG) which is a system to generate personas from online analytics data data (YouTube, Facebook, Google Analytics). I’m also running a research project on the societal impact of machine decision-making.

Business

I’ve got more than 8 years of experience in digital marketing as a marketing manager in Elämyslahjat.fi, an ecommerce company. During this time, the company has increased sales from 100k€ to more than 2M€ mainly by using Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, email marketing, SEO, and conversion optimization. I occassionally consult startups and small companies on digital marketing.

Teaching

I love teaching. Have taughts digital marketing in three different universities, services marketing, and startup marketing. My teaching philosophy relies on hands-on focus, combining theoretical and practical insights to help students realize what matters.

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