Jyväskylä Business Rally
Investor Day

Haruka Arai, jury member

Executive Director 
CEFMOF

Haruka Arai is Executive Director of Cefmof. Cefmof is a foundation established by the City of Jyväskylä, the TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team and the Toyota Mobility Foundation with the main objective of creating a carbon neutral future.

Haruka started her career in sales planning and market research analysis at NTT DOCOMO, a Japanese telecommunications company, in 2010. She gained experience in corporate, business planning and business cooperation through a secondment to a subsidiary. She was responsible for promoting open innovation between start-ups and NTT Group and investing in start-ups at NTT DOCOMO Ventures (NDV), which has been DOCOMO's venture capital company since 2020.

NTT DOCOMO Ventures has operated funds for over 15 years and invested in over 190 companies in Japan, the USA, Europe and Israel etc.  About 27% of Japanese portfolio companies became IPO. At NDV, Haruka supported and invested in i.e., software, SaaS, digital health, and circular economy start-ups both in B2B and B2C sectors.

Audra Shallal, jury member

EBAN Board Member, Nordic Female BAN, Corenvest
France

Audra is an expert in Women Entrepreneurship and Angel Investment in the EMEA region. She promotes Entrepreneurship and Angel Investing through programs, mentoring, business plan competitions, Business Angel Networks and Women Economic Empowerment within the EU and MENA region.

She consults for international organizations OECD, UNEP, UNIDO and the European Commission, and teaches courses on Entrepreneurship to the Grandes Ecoles such as ENSCP, X, ParisTech, CELSA. Audra has played a key role in launching the Enterprise Financing Network within the MENA-OECD Investment Programme which creates a unique platform to connect entrepreneurs, financiers, research bodies and policymakers in order to improve the conditions for financing entrepreneurship.

Elina Koivumäki, jury member

FiBAN

After 17 years in large Finnish law firms (14 years as a partner), Elina Koivumäki quit her partnership and founded her own law firm Lexperience in 2016. Elina specializes in legal issues related to sales, marketing, communication, copyright, data protection and AI related legal issues. In 2018 – 2021 she was also a co-founder of the Growpolis startup. 
 
Since 2016 Elina has been an angel investor in almost 10 companies (e.g. Kyrö Distillery Company and GraphoGame in her portfolio) and joined FiBAN in 2020, being Chair of FiBAN board in 2024. 
 
Elina also works as a professional speaker, moderator, and host, and is the author of the awarded “Marketing law” book series. Elina’s registered trademark is “It’s all about people” and she strongly believes in the importance of communication skills.

Jean-Louis Brelet, jury member

EBAN

Jean-Louis is a member of France Angels Board, lead of EuropIA Capital and emeritus president of Sophia Business Angels. He is an executive coach of innovative entrepreneurs, investors in 15 companies, and trainer at Business Schools, incubators and Business Angels Networks within France, EU and North Africa regions.

Jussi Heinilä, jury member

Founding member, FiBAN​

Special interest in the companies in ICT and media industry, focus on AI. Have been involved directly with more than 200 firms in their international expansion. Have invested in more than 60 startups. For the past 15 years have been fortunate to back some unique ideas by visionary founders that turned into great companies.​
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Professional experience:​
Extensive experience in international technology business. Prior to Accelerando and Partner Up Ltd., Finpro career in USA and UK. Co-founding Accelerando, WCL Wireless Commerce Ltd. (in the UK), and WS Wireless Services Oy (in Finland). Partner and investor in almost 40 companies 4 successful exits. Worked over 13 years in project, product and unit management at Nokia and in Sales, Partner and Marketing management of TeamWARE Group. ​
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Specialties: digitalisation, AI, market entry strategies, partnering, growth funding, m&a, wireless and mobile businesses, Finnish and International ICT sectors, commercialisation of the idea or product, biz. globalisation, growth strategies, go to market, management, leadership, investing, B2B, market reach.