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Ilkka Mäkitalo

Invite Ilkka to bring the conversation to your event. 

Who is Ilkka?

Co-founder and Chief Evangelist at Howspace, with 25+ years of experience in organizational change, learning, coaching, innovation, and facilitation. Former CEO and teacher/headmaster in Finland. Big band conductor. Studied systemic approaches and complexity with global influencers. PhD program in educational science background.

 

What he talks about

  • Collaborative learning and AI
  • Business leader as a conductor (stories: big band conductor for over 30 years)
  • Learning lives in work, not just programs
  • Facilitative Leadership: Why every leaders should be a facilitator
  • How we do it matters: Why dialogue doesn't happen by accident
  • Learning and development at scale without losing the human element
  • AI building human to human relationships
  • Collective Intelligence: Participation distributes intelligence
  • Human-centric transformation
  • Why we need Collaboration Designers and Collaboration Leaders
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Event keynotes & facilitation

  • Toronto Change days
  • Berlin Change Days
  • KPMG Finland Private Enterprise Tech Innovator 2023, finalist
  • Howspace Transformative Impact event 
  • LUT University Collaboration Design course (with Professor Kirsimarja Blomqvist)
  • Helsinki University: panel discussion: How is AI transforming learning and teaching?
  • JYU: EARLI SIG14 Conference 2024: panel discussion: Organizational learning in the Digital Age

    + Various webinars and industry events
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Ilkka Mäkitalo Full Bio

Ilkka is the Co-Founder and a Chief Evangelist of Howspace – the Collaborative Learning & Enablement Platform providing the L&D Leaders Community.

With a background in education and over 20 years in organizational development, Ilkka Mäkitalo saw early on that most training was a one-way street. He noticed that while information was being shared, people were rarely truly involved in the process. That gap inspired his work on collaborative learning: building capability through dialogue, participation, and shared sense-making in the flow of everyday work.

To address this, Ilkka has spent more than 10 years leading product development at Howspace. By building AI into the platform, he helps organizations drive social learning at scale. His goal is to use technology to amplify human input and connection rather than replacing it.

Known as a visionary leader and big band conductor, Ilkka uses storytelling to bring these principles to life. He leaves audiences with a fresh perspective, a new language for the dynamics they see in their organizations, and the momentum to involve people in the work that matters most.

 Book Ilkka Mäkitalo for your event 

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Ilkka Mäkitalo

Emilia Åström is a learning experience designer, facilitator, and community builder who helps organizations turn learning into living, social systems. As the initiator of the L&D Leaders community, she brings together senior learning professionals to exchange experiences and experiment with new ways of learning, showing how community can accelerate transformation from the inside out.

Before joining Howspace, she spent a decade pioneering online facilitation and hybrid collaboration practices that helped organizations build learning and innovation cultures. Having lived and worked across South and North America and Europe, she brings an international perspective to how people learn, collaborate, and lead change.

Known for her calm, creative presence, Emilia designs spaces where people feel safe to share, reflect, and act together. Whether on stage or in a workshop, she leaves audiences inspired to reimagine learning not as something delivered, but as something created together.