As the head of VINCI Energies Finland, Veera Höglund is helping to build critical infrastructure in a country whose aim is to achieve energy self-sufficiency in the short term.
Veera Höglund’s future was determined in 2000 somewhere in Arkansas, far from her native Finland. At the time, she was planning a career in teaching and worked as a substitude in a school before she went to the Southern United States as part of an exchange programme and her mind changed. “I knew straight away that it wasn’t the career for me!” she says, “But I returned to Finland with absolutely no idea of what I was going to do.”
Her father, who worked in the energy sector, suggested that she consider a career related to energy infrastructure. This was a sector full of opportunities in a country such as Finland, where there was still a great deal to be done. And so, she decided to study electrical engineering at the Tampere University of Technology, just over a two-hour drive north of Helsinki.
An accelerated career path
Nothing in the 20 years that followed has made her regret that choice. At the age of 24, she began her career at the public energy company Tampereen Vera after completing her master’s thesis there. She recalls, “When I arrived, the company was in a state of flux, opening up to the competitive market. Everything had to be built. But the scale of the task didn’t put me off – on the contrary, I saw it as an opportunity. Clearly the recklessness of youth! In any case, it was a fantastic education for me. I learned so much in extremely different areas, from team leadership to contract management to legal and insurance issues.”
In six years, Veera Höglund went from Development Manager to Executive Vice President. But she quickly ran out of room to manoeuvre in this small business of just a hundred employees. What she really wanted was to be part of a more international environment. She applied to Infratek and was hired as Quality Manager.
“The prospects for growth are considerable in a country like Finland, which is aiming for energy self-sufficiency within the next few years.”
With this Norwegian owned group in Nordics specialised in electrical supply networks, public lighting and rail transport systems, Veera Höglund continued her exemplary career path, becoming CEO of its Finnish business just five years after she first arrived. “At Infratek, I started out working in a support function role, then I had the chance to invest myself in business again, which was exactly what I wanted.”
The strength of the VINCI Energies network
The acquisition of Infratek by VINCI Energies in 2018 opened up additional new horizons for Veera Höglund. Appointed Country Manager at VINCI Energies Finland at the age of 36 she now leads a team of 500 people. “The prospects for growth are considerable in a country like Finland, which is aiming for energy self-sufficiency within the next few years,” she says. “In this context, our expertise in the construction and maintenance of energy infrastructure is an incredible asset.”
With her teams, she is currently working on a major electricity distribution site for a huge infrastructure project in Finland, on behalf of the electricity distribution company Aurora Infrastructure. “We are working on this complex project, which needs to be completed in spring 2025, in collaboration with Eitech Special Projects AB, another VINCI Energies brand that is lending us its expertise in managing complex, large-scale construction projects in Sweden.”
The challenge of parity
Alongside the business possibilities, Veera Höglund sees VINCI Energies as an opportunity to develop her own skills. “Finland is a geographically isolated country,” she points out. “The possibility to interact with other people who do my job, but also those from other fields and other countries is very rewarding.” This summer, she intends to make the most of her involvement in the conventions organised by Axians in Lisbon and Omexom in Paris: “While I wait for Actemium to arrive in the Finnish market.”
One challenge remains: to achieve greater gender parity, given that her employee team is only 9% female. “We are in a traditionally very male-oriented sector that draws from engineering courses where they are still not attracting enough women. That is changing –as young people become increasingly interested in the energy transition, we are receiving more applications from women… And a good thing too, because the strength of a team depends in part on the diversity of its members.”
12/15/2023
