About

Who am I?

My wife and I in autumn 2015.

I am Samuel, a loving husband, brother, son, friend, human being, and a fresh alumni of Aalto University aspiring to become an expert in contributing to the development of technology-intesive organizations. I am also a West Coast swing dancer, all-year commute cyclist, long-distance runner, martial arts and multi-sport enthusiast, nature lover, photographer, and a nerd over many subjects. I was raised in a Finnish-French family in the countryside of Southwest Finland, completed my upper secondary school in Turku and moved to the Helsinki Area to pursue higher education.

Why this website?

I created this website to make it easier for you to learn about me, and to encourage myself to share more. I believe in informed and data-based decision making in everything we do which is why transparency and access to information is important. I hope this website helps in building a more complete picture of who I am and how we might better collaborate. Finally, building and having a personal website has been a dream of mine since the day I first met the Internet. Yet another dream come true!

Via this website you can…

• Check my now page to learn what I currently do and what are the short and long-term goals that I focus on;
• Study my résumé page to learn about some of my achievements and professional experiences;
• Read my blog to get an understanding of what I have written about; and finally,
• View my connect page to learn how to best connect with me!

What do I believe in?

Wall graffiti in Berlin in autumn 2015.

I vouch for liberty, human rights and the rule of law, democracy, and social, economic, and environmental sustainability. I think eradicating corruption in all its forms is one of the most urgent socio-political challenges. I believe that through good leadership and both hard and smart work we can solve almost any challenge. I believe in the power of opennes, transparency, data and analysis to enable the building of bridges through facts, thus boosting collaboration and progress. I believe in being positive but also in being realistic. I believe that if everyone, instead of complaining and waiting others to act, would squeeze even just a little bit of effort daily toward reaching good compromises, the world would quickly become a much better place.

What is my life philosophy?

I believe that happiness is best enjoyed as the unintended side product of a deliberate human struggle to find meaning by serving the Reverence for Life through the courageous and leaderful application of one’s individual physical, intellectual and creative capacities while always striving to maintain a healthy balance with the opinions and aspirations of the self versus those of the environment.

What are my values?

My guiding values are:

1. Integrity – Authenticity; Honesty to one’s self and others; Clarity in personal values, vision & purpose; Living by one’s values and words; Self-confidence & balance between humility and pride.
2. Love – Care for one’s self, others and the world; Patience; Support; Exchange; Responsibility.
3. Liberty – Autonomy; Leadership; Exploration; Self-expression; Pleasure.
4. Cultivation – Curiosity; Culture; Learning; Building; Development; Growth.
5. Service – Giving & charity; Mission & role; Strategy & action; Intelligence & energy; Agility & persistence; Joy of giving & achievement.

I try to balance with and stay true to all these five guiding values by structuring my goals around them such that none of them are neglected.

What do I love?

A patch of silver birch forest in Säijä in 2016.

The section above describes not only what I value but also what I love. However, I also love to envision, plan and accomplish. I love driving and witnessing growth, progress and learning. This love inspires me to invest, build, cultivate and analyze and work hard in doing so. I love to exercise my liberty in building things that comply with my values and are likely to be of great service to myself and others. I love being useful and productive. This is why I try to maximize the time I invest in cultivating, building and developing and minimize the time I spend in activities that contribute little to the future. Moreover, my desire to be efficient with resources does not limit to just time, but also energy, money and nature.

This partially also explains why I created this website. I enjoy the idea that everything I do builds me, my personality, my knowledge, skills and interests, and that this website is able to capture some of that such that other people can analyze it, relate to or question it, and react to it. The idea motivates me to collect, organize and share some of the many bits of who I am and what I have done – how I have progressed – for easier access and analysis by myself and others. They say that maintaining an online presence of yourself pushes you to become the best possible you. I would love to witness the evolution of this website and see its impact on who I become!

What is my mission?

I believe my mission is to contribute to the development of organizations, technologies, and practical solutions that facilitate a) collecting, accessing and sharing data, b) analyzing and refining data, and c) making data-based conclusions and decisions. I believe my mission is to improve private, corporate and public decision-making and to eradicate corruption by incentivizing broadly beneficial behaviour by helping to increase transparency and knowledge.

A group of dolphins swimming in Indonesia in 2017.

I believe many of the most pressing challenges of our time, including those related to eg. the unsustainable use of resources, pollution and various other tragedies of the commons, as well as those related to corruption, violations of human rights and other inethical acts, are largely possible because of lack of transparency and knowledge. I believe Veritas vos liberabit!

I believe this mission requires me to cultivate myself such as to become expert in contributing to the development of technology-intensive organizations. Due to my love for Europe and my home country, I also take responsibility in finding my way to significantly contribute to the revitalization of the Nordic technology scene, perhaps by helping to establish and/or lead the next Finnish technology giant, and thus contribute also to the welfare of the people who generously enabled me to study and grow in prosperity.

This mission is interesting to me not only because of its positive societal impact, but also due to its fit with my passions and skillsets while enabling me to still make enough to give also to my family and friends and thus lead a very satisfying personal life.

What do I do?

Because I have many passions and broad interests I pursue a variety of goals and do a diversity of things. To balance my use of time and energy across all of what I love and aspire to achieve I apply the GTD methodology. This practice affords me the space, time and tranquillity required to focus in achieving even big goals. See my now page to learn what my goals are for the moment, and for the near future, and how I have recently spent my time.

However, here are some things I tend to do continuously even if they are not explicitly listed in my goals. These also show how my personality and life philosophy is demonstrated in my daily life:

1. I analyze. In addition to applying GTD, I constantly monitor and analyze my time use in order to help me be more mindful, efficient and effective with the time I have. Similarly although less frequently, I also monitor and analyze my use of other resources, including money and emissions, and follow the PDCA method to improve. To do this in practice, I use software I’ve written myself.
2. I dream. I always have multiple side projects and goals on various areas of life. Because of my curiosity and ambition, my GTD inbox and horizon lists are never void of exciting objectives and tasks to accomplish. This means I’m never bored but it also means I never have excess time to waste.
3. I move. Because health, physical fitness and ability is important for me, I do various kinds of sports almost daily. Recently I’ve been into running, cycling, strength training, bodypump and swimming. I also frequently compete against myself in running Cooper tests, marathons, doing long-distance ski, trekking or kayaking trips. I also do stretching and yoga to maintain my agility.
4. I dance. Dancing has always been my favourite party activity. I enjoy challenging myself in how attuned and responsive I can be to my partner, to the music and to the feeling – how creative, beautiful and intense we can be.
5. I train. I test my limits also in more technical activites. Previously I’ve trained martial arts, including Thai boxing and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Since autumn 2017 I’ve been rather intensely training West Coast swing. I’ve also taken classes in Argentine tango, cross body salsa, Brazilian zouk, ballet, hip hop, jazz, and modern dancing.
6. I invest. In addition to investing my time, I invest my other resources, including my money. I invest in stocks, real estate, and forests. I also love photography because I see it as a form of investing. Taking a minute on a special day to take a great photo can provide a lot of value to many people, especially several years later.
7. I compensate. I try to increase my efficiency with natural resources and thus minimize my ecological footprint by eg. 1) limiting my transport mileage, especially via air, and doing my daily commuting by bike; 2) being mindful, minimalist and efficient with my consumption of services and things thus investing into the proper use, maintainance and recycling of things I own and/or use and sharing things I do not need all the time, such as our car; 3) minimizing food waste and avoiding red meats and limiting my consumption of poultry, dairy products, avocadoes, rice, and other resource heavy foods; 4) sharing my house with six other individuals; 5) contributing to Compensate and finding other ways to go strongly carbon negative; and 6) promoting awareness and action to decrease the use and spoiling of natural resources as well as increase the efforts to capture carbon and recover natural resources and environments.
8. I study. I constantly study new information from a plethora of news and media sources, as well as from knowledge repositories such as Wikipedia and non-fiction literature. I aim to keep myself civilized and informed in order to ensure my mindfulness is worthwhile.

Where and how to connect with me?

Check out my connect page to find the best way to get in touch with me!