From 'Maybe 6 months' to 3 years

Tuesday, July 8 marks my three-year anniversary at Summer Health. That might not sound like a long time—especially for someone who’s been working in design for nearly three decades—but it’s the longest I’ve ever stayed with one company in a single stretch.*

So, why this place? And why now?

Let me back up a bit.

I started my design career in 1997, in a small Finnish town where the internet still felt more like a curiosity than a tool. I joined a local ad agency as what we called a ‘web designer’—back when that meant doing everything yourself. You’d sketch a layout in a pirated version of Photoshop, slice the images by hand, code it in bare-bones HTML (because that’s all there was), and upload via FTP. It was wild, chaotic, and kind of magical. These days, I can ask an AI to design and publish a site while I make a coffee. Back then, it took real time and duct tape. One of the first websites I built looked like this.

From there, I spent a short stint at a web agency before moving to Sweden to attend Hyper Island, which at the time was the coolest digital media school around. After two years—and an internship in London—I landed in Stockholm, aiming for agency life. I found work as a designer, quickly realizing that I was now the junior one in a sea of seniors. The stakes were higher, and the learning curve was steep.

Like a lot of people in the industry, I figured out pretty early that if you want a raise or a better title, you switch jobs. So I did. Every two years or so, I moved: from Projector to Starring, then ANR BBDO, and eventually Bates Y&R in Copenhagen. In just under a decade, I climbed from designer to Senior Art Director to Creative Director, and my salary jumped more than 300%. Then the financial crisis hit in 2009, and the startup I’d joined at the time shut down almost overnight.

Coming from an entrepreneurial family, I’d always imagined running my own company. I thought I’d build an agency, but what emerged instead was a one-man consultancy that lasted 15 years. And I loved it. I loved jumping into new projects, meeting new teams, and being hired for exactly the thing I did best. In those years, I worked with some of the most talented people I’ve ever met, many of whom I still call close friends. Freelancing gave me a sense of independence and variety that I thrived on.

Then I got an email from someone named Matthew Woo. It was a short, straightforward message, but two things caught my attention:

First, I’d been itching to do something more meaningful—something in the health space. After years of helping brands sell stuff, the idea of helping people felt like a shift I needed.

Second, I wondered: Who is Kevin Twohy?

I had no idea then how much that email would change things.

It turns out that doing work you genuinely care about can change your whole relationship with your career. I joined Summer Health as a freelancer, thinking it might be another 6–9 month project. That was my sweet spot: long enough to make a difference, short enough to avoid the drag of managing something instead of creating it. But this one stuck. I found myself more invested than I’d expected. And when Matthew showed me the notes from our first call—where he wrote ‘Interested in committing but not committing too long’—I had to laugh. That was me. Except, not anymore.

Three years later, I still feel like we’re just getting started. The team has grown—we’re about 20 now—but it still feels small in the best way. I work closely with most of them every day. And while the challenges are different, the shift in pace and focus has been just as demanding—just in a new way.

In consulting, you need to bring your A-game every day. There’s no time to ease in; you’re expected to deliver clarity and direction from day one.

But in a full-time role, the pressure shifts. You’re not just shipping work—you’re shaping direction, setting foundations, and thinking about what this looks like three years from now. There’s space to pause and reflect, but that’s part of the job. You’re not here to impress for a sprint. You’re here to help build something that lasts.

So why have I stayed?

It’s not just the mission, though helping families get care when they need it most hits different than pushing pixels for a cereal brand. And it’s not just the people, though I honestly enjoy working with this team more than I ever expected to in a remote setup.

It’s the combination: building something that matters, with people I admire, in a way that feels right.

I’ve learned that staying doesn’t mean standing still. These last three years have challenged me in ways that are just different from client work. The decisions run deeper. The timelines stretch longer. And the outcomes feel more personal—because they are.

Consulting taught me how to bring clarity fast, adapt quickly, and deliver with precision. But building something over years—not months—pulls on a different set of muscles. It’s slower in pace, but not in intensity.

And Kevin?

Turns out he’s a brilliant designer and someone I now consider a friend—and a mentor. To this day, I can’t believe he recommended me to the team without us ever having met. But that says everything about who he is: someone who brings good people together, someone who helps without expecting anything in return. I hope we get to build something together someday.

*Not counting my own consultancy, of course. And if you stitched all the IKEA projects I’ve worked on over the years into one continuous timeline, that might come close too.