Nina Kopola Receives Women’s Board Award 2017

Borenius was proud to host the second Finnish Women’s Board Award (WBA) ceremony on 17 March. We warmly congratulate Women’s Board Award 2017 winner Nina Kopola and the other nominees Catharina Stackelberg-Hammarén and Jaana Tuominen on their outstanding achievements and contribution.

Winner Nina Kopola is President and CEO of Suominen Corporation, Supervisory Board Member of Ilmarinen Mutual Pension lnsurance, Vice-Chair of Finnish Textile and Fashion and Board Member of Metso Corporation. The jury particularly appreciated her strong vision in board work and her understanding of the differences between the roles of a CEO and chair.

The event attracted around 80 business executives and board professionals, and the programme featured a panel discussion lead by Esko Aho, former Prime Minister of Finland, and a keynote speech by Jorma Eloranta, Chair of the Year 2016 and Chair of Neste, Suominen and Uponor.

Borenius sees the launch of the WBA into Finland as a welcome boost for the work of boards. “As a firm, we are strongly attracted by the WBA ideals and therefore we were very keen to participate in bringing the WBA to Finland. Over the last couple of years, we have invested greatly in our own award-winning Crowded Years Initiative aiming to facilitate the career prospects of talented individuals with family. At the same time we continue to advise a number of public and private company boards, and we are delighted that this event offers high-quality discussion on how successful and efficient boards are recruited and organised”, says Jyrki Tähtinen, Senior Partner.

The purpose of the WBA is to support the development of board competence and give spotlight to female Board Chair candidates in order for election committees and other relevant stakeholders to see that that the pool of female candidates ready to take Chair responsibility in larger companies is more extensive than we may think.

WBA was initiated in Norway in 2010, and has since become a tradition in Denmark, Sweden and Finland as well. We also sponsored the first Finnish award ceremony in 2016, where the award was presented to Hille Korhonen.