We’re excited to welcome Salla Niskanen to Brillian as our new AI Business Advisor! Salla brings a distinctive combination of business leadership experience, analytical thinking, and hands-on expertise in using data and AI to real business challenges.
Salla’s background covers business leadership, sales, and marketing, with a career built across a variety of roles driving growth, commercial strategy, and customer understanding. Over the past six years, Salla has worked in IT consulting and contributed to dozens of data, data warehouse, and analytics projects. She has helped organizations turn data into smarter decisions, new business opportunities, and measurable impact at scale. In 2025, she was recognized as one of Finland’s Top 100 IT influencers by Tivi.
“Salla joining is a big deal for Brillian: she brings the rare combination of strategic business leadership and practical experience with data and AI. She also shares our ambition to grow and evolve, both with our clients and as a company and people. She'll be a key part of our growing advisory team: helping us develop our offering, working directly with leadership teams and boards, and unlocking digital intelligence for the companies we work with,” says Jussi Järvinen, CEO of Brillian.
Bridging AI, Leadership, and Change into Real Business Impact
Salla has led multiple AI development initiatives and worked closely with leadership teams to elevate AI to a strategic level within organizations. She is particularly strong at connecting business needs, technological possibilities, and organizational change into a cohesive and actionable whole.
As Salla puts it:
“AI is pushing companies to rethink how they operate, compete, and create value: the transformation requires changes in leadership, ways of working, and even business models. I’ve been following Brillian’s journey from the very beginning and I’m genuinely excited to join a company at the forefront of helping organizations and people build real capability, challenge conventional thinking, and support leadership teams in leading this change.”
Salla’s transition into data-driven business began in 2017 through her doctoral research, driven by a clear conviction that data would fundamentally reshape how companies operate and compete. Since then, she has focused on combining business thinking with advanced data analysis. Her research, conducted in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich and the University of Vaasa, focuses on behavioral data analytics, leveraging big data analysis techniques to model customer behavior and identify opportunities for strategic change and more relevant services.
Known for her bold and highly result-oriented approach, Salla drives change with energy, takes ownership, and brings people along.
“The companies we work with don't need more AI hype. They need someone who can sit with their leadership and figure out what's real and worth doing. Salla does just that.” Jussi concludes.
Please join us in welcoming Salla to Brillian!
