For Riikka Tieaho, sustainability, sound governance and business growth are closely connected. As Huhtamaki’s Executive Vice President, Sustainability, Corporate Affairs & Legal, and General Counsel, she is focused on bringing different perspectives together to help turn ambition into practical progress.
Riikka joined Huhtamaki in June 2026 after serving as General Counsel at Wolt and spending two decades in legal and leadership roles at Nokia. Her experience spans both global listed-company operations and a fast-moving growth environment—background that she now brings to an industry undergoing significant change.
“I joined Huhtamaki because its strong heritage, global reach and ambition to lead in sustainable packaging all resonate with me. Packaging is part of all of our everyday lives, and our industry has a real opportunity to combine responsible choices with solutions that work for customers and consumers,” Riikka says.
Real impact with everyday decisions
Bringing Sustainability, Corporate Affairs and Legal together creates a broad view of the forces shaping Huhtamaki’s business. Sustainability helps set direction, Corporate Affairs brings insight into the changing external environment, and Legal supports sound decisions and strong governance. These functions help the business look ahead, understand what change means in practice and make informed decisions that support both responsible growth and long-term competitiveness.
“I feel that sustainability becomes meaningful when it guides concrete choices – how we innovate, invest and work with our customers. Legal and Corporate Affairs bring important additional perspectives, helping us navigate regulation and changing expectations and find practical ways forward. The real value comes from connecting these capabilities early, rather than treating them as separate steps,” says Riikka.
Helping customers navigate complexity
Packaging choices are increasingly shaped by performance requirements, regulation, infrastructure and changing customer and consumer expectations. For Riikka, Huhtamaki’s combination of global reach, local market knowledge and expertise across different materials are important strengths. They allow the company to look beyond a single product and help customers identify solutions suited to a particular application and market.
“In my experience, customers do not need products in isolation; they need solutions that perform, meet requirements and are suitable for the systems around them. Our role is to bring together knowledge of materials, technologies, markets and regulation so that we can help customers make informed choices and prepare for what comes next,” Riikka adds.
Stepping forward together
No company can shape the future of packaging alone. Progress depends on close cooperation across business segments, technologies and functions, as well as with customers, suppliers, policymakers and other partners.
“The challenges ahead are interconnected, and so our solutions need to be collaborative. When we combine expertise across Huhtamaki and work openly with customers, partners and others across the industry, we can move from individual initiatives to making an impact. That is how we turn ambition into action and support responsible growth,” Riikka says.