Educating for Hope and the Future

“Why invest in social mobility, hope, and the education of young people?”

A lot of people that know me know that I have a law degree from Columbia University and that I have lived in New York. What most people do not know is the story behind how that came to be possible and how that experience has fundamentally shaped my current work, my outlook on life, and what I advocate for as both a citizen and an entrepreneur.

It is not something I often say, but the fact that I managed to study law and later go to Columbia University is something that would not have been possible if I had started or finished university just a year earlier or later. In certain parts of my friend and family circles, my Columbia degree is a sign of “the impossible becoming possible” – and at face value, I would not disagree with that.

For context, both of my parents are first-generation university graduates. They both went to university in Germany in the 1980s, at a time when universities first opened their doors to a lot of first-generation students. The rapid post-World War II reconstruction and development of the Western German economy and the broadly-held belief that education was both key for the nation’s prosperity and for long-term peace meant that – for the first time ever in German, and perhaps also European, history – young people from disadvantaged to ordinary economic backgrounds could freely choose what to study and what to become, as long as they were smart, ambitious, and disciplined enough to complete their studies and degrees.

I went to university in the 2010s and chose to study law – a subject that is known to not be the kindest to “outsiders” or people from ordinary backgrounds. Luckily though, that was a time when the Finnish government still provided a lot of support and funding to students. When I was in my final year of high school, it was not possible to receive that support when studying abroad though – and studying abroad was a big dream of mine. The government, however, literally changed the rules just a few months before I graduated from high school. That meant that the bachelor's degree program that I wanted to do abroad became a possibility in precisely the right moment for someone like me, who could not bankroll a whole law degree from their family’s savings alone. As a beneficiary of the new rules, I got both my bachelor’s and master’s degree abroad, and both were predominantly funded by the Finnish welfare state and its taxpayers. The second plot twist in this story is that, starting the year after I graduated, the rules around student benefits were changed, effectively meaning that I would not have been able to fund my studies abroad anymore. I should add that I graduated a year earlier than planned – and even still got a part of my loan deducted by the government as a result. I guess you could say that I “timed the market just right” – but if we are being honest, the whole thing was pure luck.

When I decided to return to university in the 2020s and got my law degree at Columbia, I was no longer eligible for any type of governmental student support. Yet, a lot of my degree was made possible through my earlier studies and a group of generous foundations that gave me scholarships. The thing I will never forget about that experience and degree was my grandaunt – who never went to university herself, but who had spent her whole career working for a wealthy Finnish family and had moved briefly to New York in the 1960s while the family father undertook research at Columbia University – saying full of excitement and pride: “You are going to Columbia University, the best university in the world!”. I think she really could not believe the degree of social mobility that had happened in the course of just two generations.

I do not doubt – and have never doubted – my right to have gotten the education I got. I was very lucky in how things played out, but I was also smart and worked hard. What fundamentally bothers me though is that we live at a time and in a society where what I did is no longer possible, unless you come from considerable (intergenerational) wealth. My education has shaped so much of who I am and how I approach my work and life. It has been the foundation and building blocks for my company and my independence. My education has given me hope, courage, and a chance at experiencing upward social mobility. All those things are sadly not a given now anymore.

We now live in a Europe where children are unlikely to be more highly educated or to earn more than their parents. We also live in a world where a lot of young people cannot afford to go to university at all, or – even if they can, undertaking a whole degree abroad or at a so-called “elite university” is out of the picture even if the talent and drive is there. Alongside this, we have also seen increasing youth unemployment, increasing mental health issues amongst the youth, and increasing drug abuse amongst young people (especially recently in Finland, where I grew up). To add to this, a lot of young people feel deeply worried about the future of our planet and of humankind.

I turned thirty this year, so perhaps I am not really a “young person” myself anymore, but I feel a real responsibility to speak up. That is in part because my education was publicly funded and I really “lucked out”. Yet, perhaps the larger part is because I continue to believe that investing in education and in young people is the very best investment any of us can ever make.

I am a firm believer that education comes with a social responsibility – and that is something I personally try to live by even when it means I have to compromise on what I earn. This steadfast belief led me to walk out of what could have been a lucrative career in law in my early twenties. It was the driving force behind why I was “crazy enough” to start an impact-focused company as a female founder in 2022. It is also the reason why I have fought so hard to keep our project of building a learning hub alive, also after our funding predominantly dried out in early 2025.

I believe that what we do now will truly determine what future we will live in – and, from where I am standing, that means we need to start investing radically in the future and in young people. We need to create educational resources and structures that give the planet a fighting chance and young people hope – and frankly a reason to keep on going and believing that there is still a livable worthwhile future to be had.

I have been asked a lot lately what one thing that I wish more people knew about our learning hub and app is, and I think people mostly expect me to answer with some sort of marketing pitch. The answer I think matters the most though is that we offer students memberships at very low prices and we give away free memberships to anyone for whom paying our fees is not a realistic option. That effectively means that if you are working a low-income job, currently out of work, or otherwise struggling to make ends meet, you can use all of our resources without having to pay for these. To me, that is not charity. That is my way of passing on the baton and of saying thank you for the freedom and the future that my publicly funded education has given me.

You can buy a student membership or apply for a free membership to our learning hub and app here. If you are a company, institution, investor or individual looking to contribute to young people’s free access to high-quality educational resources focused on sustainable development or interested in partnering with us to support the future-proof upskilling of young people, please reach out.

This photo is of my grandaunt and me in 1999. My grandaunt never had the opportunity to go to university, but she worked in the household of a researcher at Columbia University in the 1960s. Just two generations later, I got a law degree from Columbia University because I was fortunate enough to benefit from institutions that saw the value of investing in the education of young people – and therewith in the future.