Hi. I’m Markus.

A playful explorer of life, a humanist, and above all, a Utopian. I believe we all need to strive for the impossible by applying ourselves and our collective energies on creating heaven on earth within this lifetime. There is only one way forward, and that is towards our #exponentialhumanity.

I am a Finnish-Canadian Earthling that spends most of my time in Istanbul, in the liminal space where East meets West. I studied Law in Canada (Laurentian University, BA) and International Relations in the UK (University of Leeds, MA), and have been fortunate and courageous enough to pursue diverse work and life experiences in 20+ countries over my 25 year career.

During my first professional decade, I cut my teeth as a business analyst, investment banker, consultant, marketing manager, and managing director for some very impressive companies and projects. In 2007, I began to walk the path of the entrepreneur as investor, property developer, hotelier, founder, community builder, and platform developer. At 48 years old, I still do not know what I will do when I grow up. It feels like I am just getting started.

I love to apply my experience and craft to building self-managing decentralized systems (from blockchain to city masterplanning), encouraging transformational growth and change (from self to organization), and work as a developer, curator, speaker, consultant, investor, advisor, mentor, facilitator, musician, matchmaker, dreamer … with people and initiatives that inspire my mind, heart, and soul.

I co-founded Joint Idea in 2015 as a ‘community of serendipity’ to connect ideas seeking the right people place and time. It is an open ended journey to shift myself and grow with others on my path from a work life to a life-work mindset and to design relationships, ventures, technologies, and connected systems to generate more human flourishing and higher consciousness as a normal way of living. This functions through an eco-system of co-working spaces, regenerative Villages (coming 2022) Life Works Labs learning and development programs, and the Love Mafia, our diverse global community that evolves through the power and wisdom of the #humanalgorithm.