Kaisa Hietala Keynote Speaker

Kaisa Hietala is an experienced business and sustainability executive who helps companies to transform the challenges of environmental megatrends into business opportunities and growth.

Ms. Hietala is an experienced leader in strategic transformation in the energy sector who began her career in upstream oil and gas exploration. Ms. Hietala served as the EVP of Renewable Products at Neste, a petroleum refining and marketing company, for five years ending in 2019. During her tenure, the Renewable Products segment’s revenues grew by 1.6x and operating profits grew by 4x. She played a central role in the strategic transformation of Neste into the world’s largest and most profitable producer of renewable products, which was named by Harvard Business Review as one of the “Top 20 Business Transformations of the Last Decade” in 2019.

Currently, Ms. Hietala serves on the Board of Exxon Mobil and the Board of Smurfit Kappa Group, a global corrugated packaging company and is the Chairman of the Board at Tracegrow, a private Finnish sustainable fertilizers company. She is a member of the Supervisory Board of Oulu University and was a former Board member of Kemira Oy, a Finnish specialty chemicals company, for the past 5 years.  She joined the Board of Rio Tinto in March 2023.

Ms. Hietala holds a Master of Philosophy degree from the University of Cambridge, UK and a Master of Science degree from University of Oulu, Finland.