Katri Kauppi (nee Karjalainen) got her PhD from Helsinki School of Economics in 2009, on the topic of "Challenges of purchasing centralization - Empirical evidence from Public Procurement". She was the youngest female doctor to graduate from the school. After her graduation, she has worked as an Assistant Professor of Operations Management at Manchester Business School, and as an Assistant Professor of Purchasing and Supply Chain Management at Nottingham University Business School. In August 2012 Katri started in the tenure track of Aalto University and she was tenured in 2018.

Katri's research is in the area of purchasing and supply chain management. Her main focus areas include organizational purchasing behavior, information asymmetry issues in supply chains, public procurement (including centralization, non-compliant purchases and services outsourcing), social sustainability in supply chains and climate change risk management.