Johanna Suo
Founding Partner & Principal Consultant in Culture and Creative
Johanna specialises in cultural strategy, culture in external relations and cooperation, transfer of skills & perspectives from creative sectors to business sectors, creative economy development and innovation.
She is a cultural entrepreneur, researcher and cultural strategist based in Brussels. With twenty years of experience from Culture and Creative Industries she has managed different types of legal entities.
Johanna is a Marshall Memorial Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States - a flagship leadership development program that introduces a new generation of European leaders to the United States, and vice versa. It is a life-long learning programme for facilitating knowledge & network development for transatlantic engagement. Her areas of focus as part of this include art as crime prevention, youth and culture as economic drivers, cultural diplomacy and art and culture in international relations.
She has been a speaker at various conferences in the US, in Japan & Europe and presented sessions at the 2017 & 2018 European Business Summit on culture as strategy and on and the importance of creativity at the heart of business success.
Since autumn 2019 she has contributed to the European Commission, DG Grow as an expert on how creative industries can help other industry and sectors innovate.
Johanna is a member of the think-tank European Cultural Parliament and has coordinated the European Cultural Parliament Youth Network and she was previously Development Director for the culture and media agency Cumediae.
A Herrman Wholebrain Thinking assessment showed that Johanna has a yellow profile (creative, imaginative, intuitive, holistic) – and is thus well-suited to working with, and adapting to, innovation processes.
Her current work includes cultural diplomacy initiatives as well a thesis on cultural diplomacy and its current challenges. Johanna also implements research and a pilot project on strategic placement of creative professionals in companies to stimulate diversified thinking, human-driven innovation & corporate innovation processes.