I’m Viivi Lähteenoja. I live in Helsinki, Finland, and I think about data for a living, which is kind of incredibly cool.
I’m a philosopher-practitioner working at the intersection of data, ethics, and policy. I currently work as Senior Data Strategist at 1001 Lakes, a Finnish consultancy specialised in the business, ethical, legal, and technical aspects of data sharing. I’m also a Senior Advisor to MyData Global, an international non-profit I co-founded. And I’m a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, where I’m putting classical Greek virtue ethics to work on contemporary data practices and surveillance capitalism — which is a sentence that took me a while to be able to write, and which I’m still figuring out how to live up to.
Here’s some of the stuff I’ve got up to in my career previously:
- Theoretical philosophy MPhil from Helsinki; Classics BA and MA from Cambridge.
- Co-founder and former Deputy General Manager, later Chair of the Board, at MyData Global.
- Formerly also Project Manager at Open Knowledge Finland, Data Policy Fellow at the World Economic Forum, Special Advisor on Data Policy to the City of Helsinki, and CEO of The MyData Company.
- Two dozen-plus publications across peer-reviewed journals, EU policy reports, and white papers — full list at Publications.
A few things about how I work and how I am.
I’m passionate about making the world a better place in my own small way. I lead with people rather than over them. I’m open and straightforward, and believe in sharing information, ideas, connections, and insights. I’m highly comfortable with ambiguity and complexity, and equally comfortable making a decision when one is needed. I’m curious and analytical about more or less everything, which has the side-effect of making me very aware of how little I actually know.
While my most natural home is in abstract and theoretical thinking, I’m also an experienced hand at the practical work of translating those ideas into things that can be used: strategy, advisory, the business of turning a good principle into a workable arrangement.
I work in English and Finnish. If you’d like to know where I’ll turn up next, Public Appearances is kept current. And if you’d like to be in touch — about an idea, a piece of writing, a conversation, a collaboration, anything at all — please do. I read everything.