On June 1, 2021, Sari Poh­jonen,MSc (Econ), was appoin­ted as a member of the Board of Oilon Group. Poh­jonen is an exper­i­enced manager and fin­an­cial expert, who cur­rently serves as a Member of the Board for both VR Group and Jane and Aatos Erkko Found­a­tion. Her latest mana­gerial pos­i­tion was for the Fiskars group, where she served as the Group CFO until August 2021. Poh­jonen has held key pos­i­tions in various major com­pan­ies, such as Sanoma Group and Reima.

“Oilon oper­ates right in the middle of the energy revolu­tion, which provides incred­ible oppor­tun­it­ies. This both puts Oilon in a slightly pecu­liar pos­i­tion and presents a very pos­it­ive chal­lenge: we need to pick and choose very care­fully to grab the best oppor­tun­it­ies,” Poh­jonen says.

Poh­jonen has had an extens­ive career in inter­na­tional com­pan­ies. Accord­ing to Poh­jonen, she was quite sur­prised by the number of coun­tries in which Oilon oper­ates.

First and fore­most, Poh­jonen will rein­force the Board with her fin­an­cial expert­ise. “The company’s oper­a­tional man­age­ment must have the best pos­sible inform­a­tion avail­able. It is the Board’s duty to remind the man­age­ment of long-​term plan­ning amidst their busy sched­ule. We must always aim for the con­tinu­ous improve­ment of our busi­ness.”

Accord­ing to Poh­jonen, she can hardly wait to get to meet new people within the Oilon organ­iz­a­tion. She has already visited Oilon’s home town of Lahti in South­ern Finland; however, due to the Covid-19 pan­demic, she could meet up with only a few people.

Cor­por­ate respons­ib­il­ity is very import­ant to Poh­jonen. “Oilon takes cor­por­ate respons­ib­il­ity very ser­i­ously. This is great, because this way, cor­por­ate respons­ib­il­ity isn’t some­thing that you simply stick on to look better. But Oilon could stand to better show the world how we address these matters.”

How does Poh­jonen feel about joining a family company?

“Both Fiskars and Sanoma had a strong family own­er­ship, which means that I’m quite famil­iar with this view­point. Oper­at­ing as a family company is abso­lutely a strength,” Poh­jonen says. Poh­jonen bal­ances out her per­sonal and work life with outdoor activ­it­ies, such as running and skiing. As an archi­tec­ture lover, she is espe­cially fond of Hel­sinki’s func­tion­al­ist build­ings from the 30s, many of which she can visit in her own neigh­bor­hood.