H.E. Ambassador Roy Eriksson

Mr. Roy Eriksson is the new Ambassador of Finland to Canada who started his four-year tenure in Ottawa in June. Prior being stationed here; Eriksson was serving in Mexico as the Ambassador of Finland. From Mexico, he was accredited as Ambassador to nine other countries in Central America and the Caribbean. 

Mr. Eriksson joined the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland in 1990 and have since then had many postings abroad. Mr. Eriksson is not in Canada for the first time. He served in Ottawa between 1995 and 1998 as the Deputy Head of Mission in the Embassy. He has also served in Berlin, Germany and in the Permanent Representation of Finland in the European Union in Brussels, Belgium. Mr. Eriksson has Master’s Degree in Political Science from the University of Helsinki.  

Mr. Seppo Rantala

Seppo Rantala started as a new Trade Commissioner March 1st ,2020. Prior to this assignment, he has worked for private sector in paper chemicals and printing industries with multiple responsibilities more than 25 years. He visited Canada first time in summer of 1987 to visit his relatives in Timmins. He returned to Canada in 1998 to work as a chemical specialist of Kemira Chemicals during a commissioning of new paper mill of Stora at Port Hawkesbury, NS. He worked for Kemira in Atlanta 2002-2005 as a Integration Manager of post-acquisition activities. He joined 2007 as a Managing Director of Helprint Oy, a subsidiary of Canadian based printing company Quebecor World. After leaving Helprint he has worked as an Interim Manager and Operations Director of Grano Oy.

Seppo is a proud grandfather of 2 year old.

Mr. Jonas Granqvist

Jonas Granqvist has been appointed as Senior Advisors in the new Business Finland office in Canada. Jonas is responsible for export promotion towards the Canadian market and attracting investments from Canada to Finland. The industry focus in Canada will be mainly on ICT, Cleantech, Health, Bio-Economy, and Consumer products.   

Business Finland is an accelerator of global growth. We are the Finnish government organization for innovation funding and trade, travel and investment promotion with about 600 experts in 40 offices globally and in 16 regional offices around Finland. Business Finland is part of the Team Finland network.

Mr. Tapio Kymäläinen

Tapio is the President of Howspace North America. He is a digital facilitation evangelist. Tapio is a seasoned expert in mixing the soup of learning, change, and digital tools. Sometimes enough to feed 10 people and other times enough for 30,000 people, but always spiced with passion, creativity, and love for learning.

Mr. Jarkko Turtiainen

We moved to Canada in August 2019 to make our stand here stronger and become more of a local company in Canada. To operate in North America we saw that this is our only option and it has paid off well for the company.

Company Cloudpermit previously Evolta was formed in 2017.  We are a spin-off from large ICT company called Solita in Finland. Back in 2011 we built 100% online based SaaS product for building departments in Finland to run their permitting purely online. Since then we have been able to standardize the permitting process in Finland and are doing the same now in Canada. In finland we have around 80% of the municipalities using our software. In Canada we have currently around 30 municipalities using our software and number is increasing fast.