Milla Törmälä has spent her whole working life in equipment rental — from the yard to the CEO’s chair. Twenty-five years of hands-on reality, an EMBA from Henley, and the rare habit of actually listening to everyone in the room.
She didn’t read about the industry. She grew up in it — and then ran it.
Milla started at Vatupassi in 2001 and has led the company as CEO since 2011. She knows the excavator on the yard, the spreadsheet in the boardroom and the person operating both. That’s why her talks land with contractors and boards alike.
No corporate fog. No borrowed buzzwords. A positive, down-to-earth voice that asks good questions and waits for the answer.
Every format gets the same preparation: she reads your business, calls your people, and builds the talk around what your audience actually wrestles with.
Leadership, growth and change in industries where the work is physical and the margins are real. Energetic, warm, zero fluff.
30–60 min · FI / ENMarkets, machines, margins and the circular economy, explained so a board, a crew or a journalist all get it the first time.
Expert sessions · WorkshopsTV, radio, podcasts and press. A named industry voice who speaks in sentences people repeat afterwards, not in press-release language.
Media · BroadcastKeeps a panel honest, curious and moving. Draws out the quiet expert, and won’t let a good question get answered with a slogan.
Panels · Fireside chatsWrites the way she talks: direct, warm, useful. Recurring columns and one-off commissions for trade and business media.
Columns · Op-edsBoard work, moderated customer events, leadership sparring: just ask.
Get in touchPick one, combine two, or brief her on something entirely your own. Each talk is rebuilt for the room in front of her.
Equipment rental is 100 years old and changing faster than ever: electrification, data, new ownership models, a new generation on the yard. How do you modernise a business without throwing away what made it work?
Scaling a capital-heavy business is a balancing act between utilisation, service and nerve. Milla walks through the decisions that compound, and the ones that only look brave.
A woman running a machine-rental company still surprises people. Milla tells it without bitterness and without a lecture: what actually helped, what got in the way, and what leaders can do on Monday morning.
A career built inside one company, and what that teaches about loyalty, ambition, renewal and knowing the business from the ground up.
Shared use is the oldest circular business model there is. What the rental industry already proves about utilisation, lifecycle and emissions, and where the honest limits are.
The most underrated leadership skill is shutting up long enough to hear the answer. A practical, positive talk about attention, trust and decisions that stick.
Milla Törmälä joined Vatupassi in 2001 and became CEO in 2011. In between she learned the business the long way round: customers, machines, people, numbers. Then she went back to school to sharpen it.
She holds an Executive MBA from Henley Business School and a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Eastern Finland, and serves as Vice Chair of the Federation of Finnish Technical Trade. She lives between Joensuu and Helsinki and travels constantly, but the answer to “what comes first?” has never changed. Family.
Ask Milla what matters and the answer is short. Family is number one. Everything else is scheduled around it. After that: a horse, a dog, the woods around Joensuu, and enough air to think clearly before the next flight.
It’s also where the speaking voice comes from. Down to earth, positive, genuinely curious about other people, because that’s how she actually is when nobody is watching.
Add a real quote from an event organiser here. Two or three sentences is plenty.
A second quote works best if it praises something specific: preparation, the Q&A, how she handled a tough panel.
A third one from a different audience: a board, a trade fair, a customer event. It shows range.
Tell Milla roughly what you have in mind. Dates, audience, format. A couple of lines is enough to start. You’ll get a straight answer, fast.