Pia Kähärä

I am a native Finn, specialized in intercultural management, organizational culture and change. I have 25+ years of experience in business with Russia and Russian speaking countries as well as experience in working with many other countries. 

My expertise lies in developing and managing sales and distribution channel cooperation of exporting companies, especially in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus. 

Having been in business with ex-USSR countries for decades and consulted companies from various industries (from cosmetics and food to IT and machinery) in their go-to-market efforts and business development for 10 years, I have realized that the lack of cultural competence is often the deal breaker number one. 

That is I decided to master the scientific base for culture and combine it to my experiences of international business. Now I can fulfill my mission to make managers and leaders culturally competent to improve their success rate in global business. My own perspective and country experience have grown much larger during the last few years working together in multicultural associate partner  team of Hofstede Insights network in bigger assignments.

I have held workshops for hundreds of managers to improve their leadership and management, and also sales, customer service and team performance in different cultures.

During the year 2019 I concentrated on mastering Huib Wursten’s The 7 Mental Images of National Cultures model (clustering countries based on the Hofstede dimension combinations) reducing the complexity of working with hundreds of global markets and laying the groundwork for finding compromise solutions between standardization and adaptation for organizations’ operations.

Organizational culture transformation connected to multicultural environment is also a topic that is near to my heart.  

I hold an MBA from the London South Bank University and an M.Sc. in Russian translation and interpretation from the University of Eastern Finland.

I love traveling, exploring different cultures, sports and reading.

Before my consultancy career I have worked, for example, as Regional manager and ExPat Head of Moscow representative office managing a multicultural team in the mobile sector for 4 years and as Unit and Project Director in a marketing agency for 3 years. I have studied, worked and lived in Moscow, Almaty and London.