“Moving to Kainuu was a matter of the heart for me.” Heini-Maari Kemppainen, Project Manager, CSC – Finnish Information Technology Center

14.03.2025 13:55

I am Heini-Maari Kemppainen, a 35-year-old design-oriented business scientist from Kajaani. I returned to my hometown of Kajaani with my family after living in Helsinki for over ten years, in the summer of 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic. This was preceded by a year-long “exchange year”, as we call it, in Hyrynsalmi – this year interrupted my years in Helsinki and left me with a burning desire to return to Kainuu more permanently – whenever the time was right. I am a mother of three, a wife, and our family also includes a retirement-age English greyhound.

I have a Master of Science in Economics from Aalto University, where I had great opportunities to focus on topics that interest me: responsibility management, digital service design, and the conceptualization and development of education. The desire to have a positive impact on society through my work drove me to study economics – I didn’t know exactly what I wanted at the time, and my education did give me good generalist skills, as well as the courage to approach the unknown.

I currently work as a project manager and team leader in the Digivision 2030 project, a joint project of all Finnish universities. Technically, I work at CSC – the Finnish Information Technology Center. I am responsible for the new national continuous learning service, Opin.fi, and I lead the design team. I am responsible for a historic project in the national scale – it has brought me a huge amount of new learning, tough challenges and also really rewarding moments professionally. We will launch the service in the spring of 2025, so these are very exciting times!

My career path has not been planned in any way, and I would not have been able to predict it in advance. As a teenager, I learned to code and graphic design, and freelanced on websites and print ads, earning pocket money during my youth. After graduating from high school, I moved to Helsinki and started as a Sales Advisor at the H&M store in Kämp Galleria in Helsinki. The flagship store at the time was a busy work environment with international customers. Those years taught me to be customer-oriented, able to handle pressure, and be organized. I worked at these jobs for a couple of years, before starting full-time studies and also during the early years of my studies. I also managed to open and work for a year at the first H&M Home store in Finland, before I went on maternity leave. So I had my first child halfway through my studies, almost finished with a Bachelor of Business Administration.

A year after my first child was born, I finished my bachelor’s degree, spent the summer studying at Aalto University’s interdisciplinary Information Technology Program (ITP) based on business projects, and was then hired as a project coordinator for the program. While the work somewhat interrupted my studies, I gained a lot of experience in project sales. My task was to package, market, and sell summer-long business projects to large companies and public actors that our students would solve. In addition to sales, my work included academic guidance and evaluation of these projects, as well as coordination of the strategic and service design line that I was responsible for. In retrospect, these projects laid the foundation for where I am now.

I returned to my studies and during my master’s degree I wanted to focus on sustainability management and service design, which had become important to me. However, they also wanted to keep me working at Aalto University in the ITP program, and I received an offer I couldn’t refuse: to study higher education as a service export from the perspective of international business during my degree. I hadn’t studied international business more than one mandatory introductory course during my studies, but the subject interested me and it was nice to take on this challenge. After my degree, I continued as a project coordinator for another year, during which I graduated and then went on maternity leave – after all, my second child was already well on its way.

The maternity leave for my second child made it possible for the exchange year I mentioned earlier in Hyrynsalmi, in the middle of nature. After we returned to Helsinki from the Kainuu wilderness, I was invited back to Aalto, this time with the title of program manager. My task was to be responsible for the Information Technology Program summer program, and to prepare the new concept of international education export for practice. I was responsible for the implementation of the Digital Business Master Class program and learned a lot about the practical intricacies of education export, international marketing, and the conceptualization and implementation of an attractive and inspiring two-week intensive course. I continued in this job for almost a year, developing an educational design tool with my colleague and promoting design thinking in educational concept development. I went on maternity leave with my third child.

During my maternity leave, I had the idea that I would like to try a different kind of work world and was recruited to an international service design agency. Unfortunately, in addition to the planned start of a new job, the end of March also saw the pandemic and lockdown, which is why this path was set up due to the challenges in the business world at the time. After a few months of thinking, I was already in a situation where I had received an interesting job in Kajaani and the previously simmering idea of a return move seemed to finally be possible.

In August 2020, I started at Kainuun Liikunta as a project manager, responsible for the Ekosport Kainuu project. My task was to build an environmentally responsible system to support event production and ensure that related expertise was trained for other operators in the area. The whole thing was interesting – I got to familiarize myself with the production of mass sports events, but also with the responsibility challenges of events on a bio-waste bag level. I did a lot of communication and also visited and lectured at KAMK. At the time, Corona also delayed the production of major events and thus the auditing of the system, so time was left – or cleared – to draw up a responsibility program for the entire organization. I was happy to present this to the Finnish Olympic Committee and, internationally, to the Olympic committees of several other countries.

A woman looks into the camera, in a field landscape.

“Interesting and surprising doors opened.”

By chance, I noticed that CSC, which also operates in Kajaani, was looking for personnel for the new Digivisio 2030 project. During the application phase, I didn’t really understand what it was about – the biggest change project of the decade and increasing digitalization and flexibility in higher education. These keywords got me excited and I got an interesting position as a project manager. I have been around the theme of continuous learning in one way or another all the time, I have been able to lead a challenging entity and work in the most inspiring environment with university management and various experts, the best service designers in Finland and of course a project office that is not afraid of challenges. At the same time, I have first been responsible for the implementation of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) in the Release Train Engineer role, then for building the design process area and conceptualizing new solutions as a design team leader. Every day is learning, growing and challenging. What’s best – I feel that I am on the verge of something meaningful: creating flexibility and ease for continuous learning – that’s what we all need.

Career highlights and challenges

Perhaps the biggest challenge in my career was the sudden change of plans caused by the corona pandemic, being momentarily left with nothing and finding a new direction. At first, I thought that the door to Kajaani would open easily, because I had excellent papers from one of Finland’s most prestigious universities and I think quite a diverse work experience, but it wasn’t easy. I applied for several jobs where I thought I had potential, but I didn’t even get an interview. One concrete challenge was that the recruiting employers couldn’t wait for the move to the city to be arranged – moving to the city doesn’t happen by snapping their fingers for someone with a family. Several people wondered if I was really moving to Kainuu. It felt a bit strange – is this how they attract talent here? The recruitment processes were very different from what I was used to in Helsinki.

The biggest highlight so far is definitely the release of the beta version of the Opin.fi service under construction in autumn 2024, when we got it to go live for the first time, albeit in a limited way. I’m already looking forward to the launch in spring 2025!

I have followed a career path where every maternity leave has gone “into its own spike” with breaks in fixed-term employment relationships or with a student identity. Returning to everyday work after maternity leave has always been a bit of a shock, but only afterwards have I realized that in many organizations this phase is also systematically supported. I have still been able to enjoy taking into account my life situation. First of all, the majority of employers have had a positive attitude towards remote work (even before the pandemic) and it has brought relief to the everyday life of a small child, where, among other things, being sick is more the rule than the exception. I have also tried partial family leave when my middle child was in second grade. Here too, the employer has been flexible.

“Remote work and multi-location are concrete.”

I have been working for almost four years in a team where I am the only one from Kajaani and the majority are from southern Finland. The work works well thanks to modern tools. So remote work and multi-location are concrete. Tools and work environment have a big impact on this. However, it is nice to have an office in your hometown and local colleagues and the local community available. Working seems to be seasonal – sometimes in multiple locations in the office, sometimes completely remotely from home. What is essential is that the work is done well and when this attitude is shared in the work community, distance is not a problem.

The call of the home region

For me, moving to Kainuu was a matter of the heart – the call of home just started to rumble under my breastbone, and it didn’t die out in the hustle and bustle of Helsinki. I have no regrets. It’s wonderful to return to Kajaani, to the peace and unhurriedness of a small town, the luxury of four seasons and the simplicity of everyday life. I often visit Helsinki, so I probably get the best of both of my beloved hometowns. However, when I come to Kajaani, it always feels like I’m home. Many people who have returned after years of absence have said the same thing. If moving to Kainuu appeals to you, I definitely encourage you to be brave and try it out, if the situation allows it.

I can’t say whether there is a uniform work culture in Kainuu, from my perspective and experience, it is such an organization-dependent thing. Work is done everywhere, the specific characteristics of the organization are always visible: the industry, values and corporate culture have an impact. The people from Kainuu are diverse too – you can’t really fit them into one mold. Maybe we know each other a little more deeply, relatives and mutual acquaintances are of interest, and often connections can be found even across generations. But this is proven to be the case in Töölö too!

“People get to know each other.”

The best thing about Kainuu is the four seasons. Here, nature and silence, the opportunity to be alone and immersed in thoughts, are more easily available than in Helsinki. The anonymity that is very strong in Helsinki is missing here. I love that, in my experience, people don’t look at social class or residential area here – I don’t think such factors that easily separate and tear apart in Helsinki are as strongly emphasized in Kainuu. Although Kainuu is a large region, from a working perspective, in my case, the territory is quite compact. Time is not wasted on hours of commuting, but rather it is possible to allocate it to, for example, my beloved hobby of dancing.

A woman in the evening sun, in a field landscape, one hand up.

Text: Heini-Maari Kemppainen

Photos: Jenni Tuikka / Ihana Photography