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Meet the team: Maarit Heikkilä is an ICT change manager, team builder and Karelian gatherer in one package

In business life, people often speak about their titles. However, the title seldom says what kind of a person you are. One of my business contacts said I am a team builder and good at networking. To some degree, those things are true. My Karelian roots are probably one of the reasons why it is easy for me to get together with people.

If I think of the most inner part of myself, I identify the “executor” in me. As one of my previous colleagues has said, there is nothing Maarit cannot implement. The positive aspect of this is that I do not fear any new situation, program or people. Of course, I have encountered many pitfalls, but that is life. I am at my best under pressure and taking part in challenging new environments or projects. 

I have been lucky to be able to work in various roles and positions in the ICT industry, both as a customer and as an ICT consultant, in recent years, especially in the financial sector. Over 15 years in application maintenance has taught me a lot about application lifecycles and managing multi-vendor environments and transformations. During my years in the banking industry, I witnessed the breakthrough of mobile banking and the importance of service design. The rise of API interfaces, just to name one of multiple seismic developments that has taken place in recent years, has changed IT architectures dramatically. Lately, as an entrepreneur, I have been working in various roles as a program manager and ICT consultant. These last few years have taught me a lot about cash flow and bookkeeping on a concrete level, as well as Robotic Process Automation and Agile processes and IT development in banking and logistics.  

I now look forward to new challenges in Midagon. Hopefully, future assignments will include things to do with areas I have been working in, but also something new. Change management, data management, API development and AI are areas I am interested in, preferably in some kind of banking or insurance program. Those are also topics of an orientation book I am currently writing to non-technical businesspeople.   

While not working, I love to go to the forest. The autumn is my favourite season. The greatest thing I can think of is to look at mushrooms. It is part of the Finnish-Hungarian tradition and I am proud to be a member of that mythical gatherer culture*. Unfortunately, my teenager does at this point share the same opinion. Hence, there is some change management work to be done at home too.  

*A book called “Kantarellin kuuntelun taito” by Valdur Mikita explains a lot about this - I highly recommend this read! 

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