people

Kristo Lehtonen

Director, Fair data economy

Who?

Kristo Lehtonen leads the Fair data economy theme at Sitra. The theme area aims to build a human-driven and fair data economy based on the European values as an alternative to a state-driven or data monopoly-driven data economy.

What?

Before joining Sitra, he worked in both the private and public sectors. He was Co-Founder & CEO of 3DBear, a XR growth company with offices in Helsinki and New York. He also worked as Special Adviser to the Minister of Transport and Communications in Finland. Before that, he spent over 10 years at Nokia as Head of Government Relations in Finland and Head of EU policies in Brussels, amongst other positions.

His passion is leading engaged teams and changing the world for the better through technology and innovation. He has worked with developing new businesses and business models in areas such as Augmented Reality (AR), 3D-printing, Virtual Reality (VR), plastic recycling, M2M and cloud at 3DBear, Nokia, Siemens and beyond. He likes to crunch numbers and has worked as Assistant in Mathematics at Helsinki University of Technology. He has software development experience at high tech companies such as Nokia, Teleste and Siemens.

What else?

In his free time, Kristo is enthusiastic about economics and has read many of the modern classics. His hobbies include combat sports and sailing.