EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP
Rebekka Mikkola
Co-Founder and CEO
Rebekka is an industry leading entrepreneur and the visionary Co-Founder of Nordic Cuddle, one of the fastest growing cuddle therapy companies based in London, providing restorative cuddle sessions within the wellness sector. A pioneer in the field of wellness, Rebekka takes a more holistic approach towards wellbeing. She is a trained cuddle therapist and massage therapist and is seen as a thought leader in the industry with over 2,000 hours of experience.
Rebekka is a sought after public speaker. Her first TEDx talk was about how ‘Cuddling Can Make Us Better Human Beings’. She has also spoken at Samsung KX, Snapchat HQ, Warwick University, Sunderland University in London and the first ever Health Optimisation Summit at the London Olympia, alongside keynote speakers such as John Gray and Dave Asprey.
Rebekka has been interviewed for major media outlets including GQ Magazine, The Guardian, Sky News, BBC Radio 4, Business Insider, UK Health Radio, Reader’s Digest, Heart FM, Madame Figaro, Balance Magazine, Elite Daily, HolisticHealthMagazine, AgeUK London, Wellness.com, ARTE, Bustle, Thrive Global and Brit + Co. She has also featured in videos shared by both UNILAD and Diply, two of the largest viral video sharing platforms in the world. A full feature on Rebekka’s background can be found on IdeaMensch.
Ryan Mizzen
Co-Founder and COO
Ryan is the Co-Founder and COO of Nordic Cuddle. He is responsible for practitioner on-boarding, partnership liaison, PR and media requests, content creation and raising brand awareness. You can read his Huffington Post interview for Nordic Cuddle here.
Prior to joining Nordic Cuddle, he worked as a Frealance Journalist with articles published in several prominent outlets, including the Independent, Thomson Reuters Foundation and Africa Geographic. He also spent four years working as a Bid Writer, where he led and successfully won numerous multi-million pound frameworks and projects in the offshore wind and energy efficiency sectors.
In 2018, he was named as an Environmental Changemaker, following on from the United Nations Young Champions of the Earth Competition. He holds a First Class BSc in Climate Change from Coventry University and a Distinction in his MA in Creative Writing from Teesside University.
MEDICAL & WELLNESS ADVISORY BOARD
Professor Kory Floyd, PhD
Kory Floyd is a professor of interpersonal communication and the author of 16 books and more than 100 scientific papers and book chapters. This includes The Loneliness Cure: Six Strategies for Finding Real Connections in Your Life. He is an elected fellow of the International Communication Association. His work has been recognised with both the Charles H. Woolbert award and the Bernard J. Brommel award from the National Communication Association, as well as the Distinguished Scholar award from the Western States Communication Association and the Early Career Achievement award from the International Association for Relationship Research.
Raised near Seattle, Kory earned an undergraduate degree in English at Western Washington University. He then received his master’s degree in communication from the University of Washington and his PhD in communication from the University of Arizona, where he is now a professor of communication and a professor of psychology. His work focuses on how people show affection for each other in their close relationships and on the problems we face when we don't have enough intimacy in our lives.
Dr Juulia T. Suvilehto, D.Sc. (Tech)
Juulia is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Social and Affective Neuroscience at Linköping University. Her PhD research was centered around social interaction, particularly paradigms and practices related to social touching behaviour. Now she is working on multiple projects examining individual variation in social touch perception. She is driven by a curiosity about how humans establish and maintain social bonds. Her other research interests include pain and its relationship to experiencing emotions in the body and combining large scale (e.g. online) data collection with more traditional laboratory-based measurements.
She has previously worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford, and been a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. She has won numerous awards and honours, including the Aalto University Dissertation Award for exceptionally distinguished dissertation. She was recently awarded a two-year research grant worth 2.3 million Swedish krona from the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life, and Welfare for a project starting in 2020.
Dr Emilia Vuorisalmi, MD
Emilia Vuorisalmi is a medical doctor, TV personality, non-fiction author and entrepreneur from Finland. Vuorisalmi works as a private practitioner focusing on preventive medicine and holistic wellbeing. Vuorisalmi believes love is the strongest medicine and wants you to learn to use it right.
In August 2015, Vuorisalmi published her first book Sekaisin LOVEsta which is a scientific exploration of the issues of falling in love and being in a relationship. She discusses the effects of hormones and stress on maintaining a successful relationship, and also attempts to answer why we fall in and why we break-up. Sekaisin LOVEsta is published by Otava in Finland.
Her next book “Own Love” is coming out in October 2020. The book will teach you how to create a sustainable love model that will stabilise the love hormones and keep you healthy and thriving. Photo credit: Marica Rosengård.
Dr. Liliya T.B Wheatcraft, MD, MSc (Cantab), DCH, MRCPsych
Liliya is a Psychiatrist, Autism Consultant and retired medical doctor. She is a full Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK, and a member of the Neurodevelopmental Psychiatry Special Interest Group. She is building a portfolio career capitalising on her one-of-a-kind expertise in Neurodevelopmental conditions, such as Autism & ADHD. She has a well-rounded clinical background, training in trauma and orthopaedic surgery, paediatrics, and General Practice before specialising in Psychiatry. She has studied at both the University of Cambridge (fully funded by Gates Cambridge Scholarship & Overseas Research Studentship) and the University of Oxford (funded by her employer, as an Academic GP Registrar).
Liliya trained in Paediatric Medicine in Oxford Children's Hospital, and she holds a Diploma in Child Health from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, UK. She has also completed the core training modules at the University of Oxford Evidence-Based Medicine programme, run jointly by the Department of Primary Care with the Department of Continuous Education.