Nelli Såger

Nelli Såger is a change leadership expert, engineer, and health-tech startup entrepreneur known for her ability to drive complex transformations in environments where technology, people, and structures collide. In early 2025, Nelli was appointed CEO of Ellun Kanat, a leading transformation consultancy, where she works at the heart of the most significant organizational and societal shifts.

Nelli’s career has been built around the practical execution of change. She has led digital and operating model transformations in healthcare, taken new care models into production in multi-stakeholder environments, and built a startup from an early idea to international growth and a successful exit. At the core of her work has always been the same question: how do you make change actually happen—not just in plans and strategies, but in people’s everyday lives?

At Mehiläinen, Nelli led digital development for public healthcare services and was previously responsible for developing and commercializing a digitally supported care model for chronic diseases at its subsidiary BeeHealthy. The care model was recognized by the Finnish Impact Society as one of the Impact Deeds of the Year in 2022. The work required leading change simultaneously at the individual, team, organizational, and system levels—as professional practices, patient experiences, and structures evolved.

As a startup founder, Nelli established Fifth Corner Inc. in Finland, later taking the company on a journey through London to Silicon Valley. In collaboration with Jamie Oliver, the company developed the YOU-app and became the first Finnish company accepted into the prestigious 500 Startups accelerator. The company’s business was acquired by Hintsa Performance Oy in 2019. This experience gave Nelli a deep understanding of change at the individual level—how behavior, routines, and motivation truly change, or fail to change.

In her keynotes, Nelli Såger connects organizational change leadership with individual behavior change. She speaks about why change is challenging, what change demands from leaders in practice, and how organizations can build genuine change capability in an environment of continuous uncertainty. Nelli does not speak about change in theory—she speaks about how to make it happen.