Ulla Luukas

Ms. Ulla Luukas is the current Head Coach of JAMK University of Applied Sciences’ award-winning Tiimiakatemia Jyväskylä. Before starting as a full-time team coach in Tiimiakatemia in 2004, she worked for the telecommunications giant Nokia in demanding managerial positions in international settings for nine years.

Ms. Luukas started stewarding the most prestigious and longest-standing Tiimiakatemia Jyväskylä in 2011 as its Head Coach. During her career in Tiimiakatemia she has coached several teams (3.5 years each team). Currently she is responsible for managing the whole Tiimiakatemia Jyväskylä where approximately 200 students work and complete their BBA studies in 12 team companies.

The managerial and business expertise Ms. Luukas gained during her Nokia years has helped Tiimiakatemia Jyväskylä’s community to boost its team companies’ business practices and their staffs’ project management competencies. For example, in the summer of 2011 Tiimiakatemia Jyväskylä’s students’ team companies generated revenue of 860,000 euros and created over a hundred summer jobs.

Ms. Luukas enjoys running during her leisure time and has a disciplined training program for that. She has run many half marathons and aims to run several more. Ms. Luukas is married and has three children. She lives in Central Finland, Jyväskylä.

Ms. Luukas’ current mission is to develop the Tiimiakatemia Jyväskylä’s international network to a new level. Tiimiakatemia’s vision is to be the leading, boundary-crossing, top unit for team entrepreneurship in Europe. She strives to build a strong network where different universities using Tiimiakatemia’s methodology can do joint projects and joint-degree studies together. Currently approximately 47 % of Tiimiakatemia Jyväskylä’s graduates are employed as entrepreneurs within two years of their graduation. The combined revenue of the students’ team companies is currently 1.5 million euros. Ms. Luukas has decided to set the bar even higher: she aims to raise this entrepreneurship ratio well above 55 % and the combined revenue to over two million euros in the upcoming years.