Kristin Karu

Job-title-wise, the Head of Finance of a new mobile gaming start-up in Berlin called TreasureHunt. In practice, taking care of most of the non-development-related tasks to support the team in making great games!

I am responsible for coordinating the US driven change in Europe with a special focus on getting the impacted teams on board. With no direct authority, I am using my networking skills to reach out to the European CFOs to get things done (engaging heads and hearts). Again with no direct authority, I spotted an opportunity to streamline the roll-out of the new operating procedures. I hustled to get buy-in, ran and delivered the project. This has really energised the units!

I was part of spinning up this new operation in Mars Inc, EMEA. With no prior internal auditing experience I had to quickly learn the new skills. I was leading the audits in more than 20 units and cultures with 70% travel across the EMEA region. I was responsible for planning the audit, execution and follow-through. My audit work helped these units to improve their internal controls and make the operations more fraud-proof.

Using data driven analysis, I defined the most effective price points for our products for the UK market. I worked with the consumer insights and sales teams to validate and implement this strategy. I was also responsible for managing the profitable growth of our Dog Treats portfolio including, Creating a business case for a new sub-brand launch. Optimizing the promotional activity plans and trade spend of underperforming product lines.

Full responsibility for the business unit’s finances (everything from sales and earnings delivery to online sales processing and VAT reporting). Worked with the engineering team to improve online payment platform. At the end of the day, in this mini-CFO role, I made sure that the new growth was also profitable.

Supported the Factory Team with managing their budgets and was the finance lead in various continuous improvement projects.

During my university undergraduate years, I worked as a financial controller at Leibur AS and at KPMG.

At the age of 17, I founded a business to compile, publish and market a book on the principles of career planning, the future trends of Estonian labor market and their implications for undergraduates. I personally sold 3000 copies.

Majoring in Money and Baking