An “As Told To” interview by Kristaps Kovalonoks, Research Coordinator at Aalto School of Business.
This interview is part of a first-person storytelling series highlighting the personal journeys, ideas, and insights of members of Aalto University’s Entrepreneurship Unit (ENTU). Real stories, told in their own words.
How do you turn floral waste into moments of connection and community wellbeing? For Aalto alumna Kati Mayfield, the answer was to start FloweRescue, a non-profit on a mission that no flower should go to waste before bringing joy to somebody. In this interview, Kati shares how a master’s in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management led her from US to Finland, why she believes impact can be deep rather than big, and how the Aalto network helped her get started.
My name is Kati Mayfield. I am originally from the US, from a state called Colorado, which most people in Finland know either for the mountains, a hockey team, or the show South Park. I came to Finland in 2016 to do my master’s degree at Aalto in the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management programme. The plan was to stay two years and then return to the US, but now it is almost nine years later and I am still here.
A big reason for that is FloweRescue, the non-profit I founded and now run. We started activities in 2018 and became official in 2020.
At FloweRescue our vision is that no flower should go to waste before bringing joy to somebody. In practice, what we do is collect ''waste'' or surplus flowers from wholesalers, florists, and events. I put ''waste'' in quotation marks because sometimes they are pretty good quality and sometimes they are really bad. We clean them up and then donate them on to good causes like elder care homes, charities, and community groups.
We often say we would like to work ourselves out of a job. If one day there were no flower waste, that would be success. Until then, we use what would otherwise be thrown away to spark conversations about sustainability in the floral industry and also to create moments of connection and wellbeing. So far we have rescued around 230,000 stems. In Helsinki alone, we estimate there are about half a million flowers each year that could be rescued. On the social side, thousands of people have joined our workshops, and about 96 percent say afterwards that they feel better or more connected. That is the kind of impact we are aiming for.
It started when I was still in the US. I read a book by a journalist about the flower industry, and that was the first time I really became aware of all the environmental and ethical issues connected to cut flowers. Before that, I had worked in a flower shop during my bachelor’s, but I never thought about where the flowers came from or what their journey was before they got to the shop.
When I applied to Aalto, I already knew that I wanted to study the global floral business and sustainability, probably in South America since that is where a lot of flowers are grown. My master’s thesis ended up focusing on small-scale rose growers in Ecuador. That time at Aalto really nurtured that spark and helped me see that if we want change, we have to look both at the small choices people make and also at the bigger systems that shape the industry.
It definitely was not a straight path. My first idea was actually a for-profit app, kind of influenced by all the platform thinking that was around at the time. That idea totally flopped, which was hard, but it also forced me to step back and think about what the community actually wanted and what kind of organisation I felt able to lead. That is when I went back to the non-profit route.
Another big challenge was funding. In the beginning, we did not really fit anywhere. We were not fully sustainability, or fully culture, or fully wellbeing, so people did not quite know how to place us. Some funders even saw our model as a problem. For example, when they thought of sustainability, they thought about cleaning up the Baltic Sea or something very concrete like that, not flower waste. So in their eyes we were not really “sustainable enough.” Over time, that combination of sustainability, culture, and wellbeing has become more of a strength, but in the beginning it made things harder.
Now the challenge is how to grow the impact without building a heavy structure. We want to be able to reach more people and rescue more flowers, but still keep the organisation lean and focused on the problem and not on itself.
I came to Aalto because I wanted to study entrepreneurship and sustainability, and I also wanted to somehow study the floral industry. The programme at Aalto had this mix of business and design that felt unique, and it seemed like the right place for me.
My experience there was really about connections. Through professors and courses, I got connected to The Shortcut, and later I did a practical placement with Kasvuryhmä. A lot of the early volunteers and mentors for FloweRescue came through those networks. Finland can feel very networked and sometimes closed, but as a student doors opened that might not have opened later. I am glad that I went through them when I had the chance.
One of my favourite memories is the Aalto Startup Circus at Startup Sauna. The first time I pitched there was with The Shortcut, and later I went back with an early idea for FloweRescue. It was such a fun event, and it showed me the creative and playful side of entrepreneurship. Sometimes people focus only on the serious business side, which is also important, but that event reminded me that entrepreneurship is also about creativity and community.
I gravitated toward the creative sustainability courses. Sustainable Business and Consumption with Minna Halme was one that really stayed with me. Venture Ideation with Jukka-Pekka Heikkilä was also important, because it gave me a push to try things out in practice, and he became a mentor for me. Another course was Entrepreneurial Competencies. Before, I had always heard that you don’t study entrepreneurship, you just do it. But what I realised in that course was that you can study it, you can practise it, you can research it, and then you can also do it. That changed the way I thought about it.
I would not say that I am super embedded in alumni life. I do still sometimes go back and do guest lectures, and I meet Aalto people through volunteering. I am proud to have an Aalto degree. It definitely carries weight in Finland. For example, when I give a workshop at a consulting firm and say that I first came to Finland to do my master’s at Aalto, people listen differently. The name itself helps the message land.
I would say start small. Test and learn, and only scale the things that actually work. Impact does not always mean going big. Sometimes going deeper in one place can be just as meaningful as spreading wider. You also do not have to even call yourself an entrepreneur to do things entrepreneurially. Try, fail, try again. Just begin.
