Kaisu Leppänen

Kaisu is working as a Director at Spinverse. She leads Spinverse's Bioeconomy team and helps companies and consortia with their R&D&I needs, including for example building and scoping collaborative projects, finding partners, preparing public funding applications, and developing growth and innovation strategies.

Kaisu has wide experience from planning and managing different types of R&D&I activities, ranging from single company projects to large scale multi-party innovation programs and ecosystems. She works with both growth-seeking SMEs and large corporations in the fields of e.g. bioeconomy, circular economy, materials, and renewable energy. She is also an experienced facilitator of public-private-partnership activities.

At Spinverse, Kaisu’s recent projects have included for example the EU project VEHICLE - a 10 M€ demonstration project for the valorisation of lignocellulosic sugars, Mirka's 5 M€ ecosystem project that takes their surface finishing business to the digital age, and the Digital Fiber Initiative, a Siemens-led ecosystem aiming to boost the renewal and growth of the forest industry with the help of digitalization. Kaisu has helped customers acquire millions of euros of EU and national funding, facilitated the preparation of three large innovation programs worth  ~90 M€ in total, acted as the Program Manager for CLIC Innovation’s Sustainable Bioenergy Solutions for Tomorrow (BEST) program (2013-2016), and sparred numerous companies on their path to new sustainable business.

She holds a M.Sc. degree in analytical chemistry from University of Helsinki and has also studied Organizations and Management at Aalto University School of Economics. From her previous work as a researcher at the Finnish Forest Research Institute she has hands-on experience in the research and development of new biorefinery processes and bio-based products.

In her spare time, Kaisu enjoys social dancing (especially salsa and other Afro-Latin dances), cycling, travelling, as well as good food and wine.