After living six months in Oulu she moved to Helsinki, where she studied music and dance at The Sibelius Upper Secondary School.

[3] Since 2011, Koutaniemi has been travelling and working around the world, such as in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Koutaniemi is a founder member of an Italian Photo Agency Echo and Finnish Collective 11.

[4] Koutaniemi is partly of Romani descent, and according to a DNA test she took in 2018, she also has Central Asian and Eskimo ancestry.

[7] In 2014, Koutaniemi won the Visa D'or Daily Press Award in Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan, France, and Freelens Award in Lumix Photo Festival in Hannover, (Germany) with her reportage about female genital mutilation of two maasai girls.