Hello! I am a strategy consultant and social anthropologist.
I believe that most problems can be solved with imagination and intellectual clarity—by first breaking things down and apart, and then putting them back together again in a way that reveals something new.
My professional background includes experience in corporate communications, business development, and applied anthropology, with projects in both Finland and Japan across sectors ranging from academic publishing and private equity to public diplomacy and mobility design.
Alongside my strengths in research, I have done project and account management, media relations, fixing, interpreting and translating, as well as teaching and mentoring. As a social scientist, my interests include entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility, political participation, gender, sexuality and military culture. I am experienced in ethnographic research methods, including interviewing and participant observation.
I am currently based in Helsinki where I divide my time between consulting and academic research. I hold a PhD in Social Anthropology and an MA in Japanese Studies, both from the University of Cambridge. I speak and write English, Finnish and Japanese.
Sakari Mesimäki
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Problem
A team at a Finnish investment company wanted to improve and formalise their methods for team assessment. This was considered a critical part of investment due diligence but was carried out without the standardization and structure of more technical methods of assessment.Approach
Becoming familiar with existing processes through interviews and participant observation, it became apparent that the team lacked adequate methods for systematically articulating and sharing the knowledge they were already creating, particularly so that this largely qualitative knowledge would be seen as legitimate in a cultural context favouring quantitative and formalised data. Working closely with the team, I created a new framework for communicating qualitative findings from team evaluation in a structured format that better represented their importance, legitimacy and usefulness. I also created a handbook that consolidated the team’s expertise in team assessment methods. Throughout, I was sensitive to the team’s concern to avoid the burden of additional reporting processes and worked to ensure that the new tools were relevant and efficient.Impact
The new framework for team evaluation made it easier to share, discuss and assess qualitative findings alongside more quantitative due diligence data, both during the assessment process and when making formal investment proposals. The handbook on team evaluation methods enabled more effective sharing of know-how within the team and streamlined the onboarding of new employees.
Learn more about this case study
I presented a paper on this case study at the 2025 Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference in Helsinki. The open access paper can be downloaded from the peer reviewed EPIC Proceedings journal: Investors as Uneasy Ethnographers: Resolving Frictions between Technical-Rational Ideals and Para-ethnographic Practice in Private Equity Due Diligence -
Problem
A large, traditional Japanese organisation with a presence in Finland was concerned by the nature of coverage they were receiving in Finnish media. I was asked to support the organisation in engaging the media in question.Approach
Based on desk research and interviews with contacts in Finnish media, the public relations industry and civil society, I prepared a report explaining the cultural context of the articles that had led to the client’s concerns, including advice on how to interpret their potential impact on the organization. Although I had been asked for help engaging the media in question, my report in fact recommended against any direct engagement. The report provided detail on the risks and opportunities of different kinds of media engagement, with suggested steps on how to react positively to the coverage in question as well on how to develop closer relations with local media in the future. The report was prepared in Japanese according to the organisation’s own norms and formatting.Impact
My report allowed the client to make an informed assessment of the situation and avoid risks resulting from cultural misunderstandings. Its familiar formatting and language equipped my direct client with authoritative, easy-to-share analysis with which to satisfy the concerns of internal stakeholders. My recommendations provided the client with a sense of control in an otherwise frustrating situation. -
Problem
In my role as an account executive at a communications consultancy in Tokyo, I worked with an international academic publisher that wished to engage local media to become better known in the market for their data analysis tools. The company had limited existing media contacts in a cultural context where trusted relationships are critically important.Approach
Reaching out to a number of science reporters at Japan’s major publications, I requested to briefly meet with them to learn more about their needs and interests in science journalism. Relations with media consultants are often strained, with reporters frustrated by frequent and irrelevant pitches made by pushy public relations professionals. Sensitive to this dynamic, I emphasised my role as representing a scientific publisher and asked only to learn more about their work without any pitch of my own. The approach led to a far higher rate of accepted meetings than conventional pitching. The meetings produced insights on how the publisher’s tools could be utilised to support data-driven journalism on the specific topics of interest shared by reporters and established an initial network of friendly media contacts.Impact
Building on this initial round of meetings, we were later highly successful in engaging reporters in a deliberate and relevant manner. These engagements led to numerous stories in the top national daily newspapers such as the Yomiuri Shimbun and The Nikkei, that made prominent use of the publisher’s data analysis tools in their reporting.
Consulting case studies
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‘Making the world a better place’ has long been a trope in startup and venture capital hype. But with the proliferation of corporate social responsibility concepts like ‘impact’ and ‘purpose’, and genres of entrepreneurship such as ‘deep tech’ and ‘climate tech’, it seems like a trope that is taken ever more seriously by startup professionals.
For my PhD research project, I conducted a year of ethnographic research with startup founders, investors and other professionals in Helsinki to explore how they seek to apply the tools of entrepreneurship to ethical purposes beyond profit. In my analysis, I develop the concept of ‘capitalist agency’ to capture how my interlocutors see alignment with capital accumulation as the only realistic way to their empower worldmaking projects at scale, even as it comes with its own conditions and limitations. Along the way, I explore questions such as: Why has startup culture become so serious? What do investors think about degrowth? Do startup enthusiasts really believe their own hype?
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In Japan, ‘politics’ is often seen as something that is difficult, boring, and irrelevant to daily life. On the one hand it is associated with old men in suits carrying out stuffy, bureaucratic formalities or blundering their way through grubby scandals, and on the other hand with the frightening legacy of radical and violent left wing protest movements.
My master’s thesis research explored a community of young Tokyo creatives who sought to overcome these negative associations by cultivating a new way to engage in politics as a ‘normal’ and ‘cool’ part of youth culture and everyday life. By putting political discourse in contexts such as a panel discussion in a trendy bar or on the pages of fashion magazines, they sought to make politics attractive and accessible as a signifier of ‘cool’ to be consumed for constructing one’s identity and establishing social distinction. I concluded that though the creatives’ project may open up new space for political discussion, their efforts to make politics feel safe and ‘positive’ may have neutered it of the conflict that ultimately makes politics meaningful.
You can download the thesis from the University of Helsinki’s online repository.
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Extracurricular clubs have been studied as a major part of how young Japanese men are socialised to become hard-working and group-oriented office workers. But what happens to this process when the extracurricular club is one for learning and performing hip hop dance?
My bachelor’s thesis was an ethnography of the men in a Tokyo university hip hop dance club I participated in during my undergraduate year abroad. The study explores how the club’s engagement with hip hop’s anti-establishment aesthetic and individualistic modes of competition sideline more ’traditional’ ways of constructing masculinity through shared experiences of hard practice and discipline. Instead, aspects of hip hop dance culture such as one-vs-one ‘dance battles’ provide men with public arenas of individual visibility and competition in which to create their masculine reputations. I suggest that this individualism and competitiveness may in fact better prepare them for the expectations faced by adult male professionals in Japan’s increasingly neoliberal working culture.
The thesis was published as a chapter in the edited volume Cool Japanese Men: Studying New Masculinities at Cambridge and is set as reading in a course on Japanese society at the University of Cambridge. You can download a copy here.