The Hype is Real

Kaja Kallas is the Prime Minister of Estonia. She has served as a member of the European Parliament from 2014 to 2018, repre-senting the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. Before her election to parliament, she was an attorney specializing in European and Estonian competition law.

Riina Sikkut is the acting Minister of Economic Affairs and Infrastructure. She is a former Minister of Health and Labour and a former member of the Estonian Parliament (Riigikogu). Sikkut graduated from the University of Tartu with a degree in economy and with a master’s degree in health policy from the University of London. She is a member of the Social Democratic Party and serves as the party’s deputy chairman.

Luukas Ilves is Estonia’s Government Chief Information Officer and Undersecretary for Digital Development at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications. Most recently, Luukas was head of strategy at Guardtime, a leading blockchain company. He previously served in various positions for the Government of Estonia and the European Commission before joining the Lisbon Council, a Brussels-based think tank. Luukas is a graduate of Stanford University.

Ave Lauringson is the managing director at e-Estonia. She has previously been the Leading Specialist at the Information Society Unit at Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications.

Liina Maria is the Director of the Estonian Tourist Board at Estonian Business and Innovation Agency. Her previous experience includes 12 years at LHV Bank, as well as 2 years as the CEO of Tallinn Film Wonderland. She has been active in the Financial sector and the industry, and has written articles on the Tourism sector in Estonia.

Joonas Vänto is the director of Invest Estonia, one of the most digitally developed investment agencies in Europe. Invest Estonia has won awards for being innovative and agile in attracting FDI to Estonia. His background is diverse by having an education in business and experience from both the private and public sectors. He has been an entrepreneur and an advisor to the Minister of Interior as well.

Dr. Ott Velsberg is the current Chief Data Officer of Estonian Government with experience in coordinating data governance and data science, including domains of artificial intelligence, open data, citizen-centric data governance, once-only principle, data management, government-to-business data exchange and much more. He has lead Estonia to a trendsetter status in data governance, open data and artificial intelligence.

Mihkel Solvak is an associate professor of technology research at the University of Tartu, where his research focuses on digital public services, trust in technology and Internet voting. He is also the manager of Center of IT Impact Studies (CITIS). CITIS prototypes and pilots different data driven services for the public and private sector using various data science and machine learning methods.

Marki Tihhonova-Kreek is CEO of CTF Tech, an Estonian cyber security company specializing on gamified cyber education. Their goal is to shape the next generation of cyber talents and address the global shortage of cyber experts. The most famous cyber event series that CTF Tech is organizing globally is called Cyber Battle of.. any city, region or country in the world.

Jaak Vilo heads the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Tartu, the Data Science chair, and and the Bioinformatics group. He’s research areas include bioinformatics, data analysis and visualization, and algorithms research.

Eve Peeterson is the head of Startup Estonia. Eve and her team work to push Estonia’s startup ecosystem to become one of the world’s best places for startups, partnering with and uniting the best of startups, incubators, accelerators, and the private and public sectors. She has attained a MScEng in Digital Transformation in Business from TalTech and a MA from Tallinn University – majoring in English Philology, and minoring in Psychology.

Oliver Väärtnõu is the CEO of Cybernetica with long-term experience in innovation and technology management. Previously, he was the Strategy Director for the Estonian Government Office and CEO of the ELIKO Technology Competence Center. He has served as Deputy Head of Foreign Relations in the Global Trust Council in Sweden, and worked as management consultant for GTC Technologies AB in Denmark. He has a MSc in Innovation and Science Policy from University of Sussex.

Sandra is the Deputy Secretary General of Business Environment and Consumer Affairs in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications. Prior to this role she has had both private and public sector experience, having worked at Meta (Facebook), the Estonian tech unicorn, Bolt as well as the Estonian government and the European Commission. She is also a lecturer at TalTech.

Carlos is the tech co-founder of Glia and writer of the first lines of code that initially defined its product. He built the Estonian-based team that’s creating the world-class Digital Customer Service platform. If you ask him, Glia’s success is all thanks to the talented people that he gets to learn from daily. He’s a graduate of the University of Tartu with a Master’s in Software Engineering (Embedded Real-Time Systems) and a fan of Estonian-style communication.

Annika Järs is the Startup Visa and Foreign Relations Project Lead at Startup Estonia. The Startup Visa project is dedicated to bring outside talent into Estonia and help promote growth in the local startups. The project has thus far accepted close to 4800 applicants. Annika graduated from the University of Verona with a BA in Foreign Languages.

Mart Suurkask, the founder and CEO of Bercman Technologies, lost his best friend’s brother in a car accident and decided to dedicate himself to put an end to unnecessary traffic accidents.

Bercman Technologies is an Estonian deep-tech company on a mission to help vehicles to communicate with each other and with a surrounding environment to save people’s lives and increase safety. Bercman Technology develops AI-powered road safety products, hardware and software to support Vision Zero implementation and accelerated deployment of self-driving vehicles.

Marek Alliksoo, CEO of SKYCORP, is a leading industry expert in hydrogen technologies and unmanned aerial systems, and an ecosystem developer of future vertical airspace. SKYCORP develops hydrogen drones towards building the green autonomous ecosystem of drone-based services. Marek is a board member of the Estonian Association of Hydrogen Technologies, a member of the European Clean Hydrogen Alliance’s Mobility Round Table, and a member of the International Hydrogen Aviation Association.

Lauri Haav heads up Estonia’s e-Residency programme, a unique government start-up that has revolutionised how a country can serve entrepreneurs from outside its borders. Since 2014, e-Residency has empowered global startup founders and freelancers alike by providing them with a secure means of digital identification and the ability to register a truly location-independent business in an EU member state and the world’s most digital society. Every entrepreneur who has an e-resident digital ID can access Estonia’s e-services, sign documents digitally, and launch and run their business 100% online. Lauri has more than 20 years of private sector experience , having co-founded as well as held senior positions in the innovation-driven global companies in the field of IT and fintech.

As an early executive of Estonian first unicorn Skype, Sten Tamkivi is one of the main builders of the Estonian unicorn factory that has produced 10 unicorns so far and made Estonia the European leader in unicorns per capita. Sten Tamkivi invests in legendary tech companies in their earliest stages via Plural Platform, with Ian Hogarth, Khaled Helioui, Taavet Hinrikus and other European founders. Taavet+Sten also do many other things together outside early tech.

Lili Milani is a professor of pharmacogenomics at the Institute of Genomics, University of Tartu. She is also the vice director of the institute, directing the research and scientific collaborations of the Estonian Genome Centre. Her team focuses on using electronic health records and drug prescription data of participants of the Estonian Biobank to find associations between genetic variants, treatment outcomes, and adverse drug reactions among individuals who have been prescribed specific drugs. The Estonian Biobank hosts the genetic and healthcare data of over 200,000 participants and is among the leading biobanks in the world. The team at the Institute of Genomics is actively participating in research and implementation of personalized medicine in Estonia, in close collaboration with the Institute of Computer Science, Ministry of Social Affairs and Institute for Health Development.

Triin Kask is an Estonian female serial entrepreneur. Triin is a mother of three children and has built a new startup while being at home with each child. She is one of the Estonians who have won from Estonia’s parental leave system that supports starting businesses. The Estonian parental leave system allows staying at home with the child for 3 years, 1.5 years of which are supported by the government with the average monthly salary the parent used to earn before the leave. Triin is currently building her fourth company Metatellus. She has been an active member of the Estonian startup community and is supporting other female founders as a mentor and angel investor to get them off the ground.

Anneli and her team helps talented people from all over the world to discover a new and exciting lifestyle with attractive career prospects right here, in Estonia.

She has previously been in several roles that contained strategic communication and team leadership in Telia, Skanska and Foundation Innove.

Carlos Fonseca works to advance the knowledge about the use of mobile big data and its benefits among public and private sector organisations across Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America. He has worked for technology companies, local governments, and international institutions. Carlos has graduate degrees from Denmark and Estonia in human interaction through digital systems.

Positium is a mobile big data analytics company from Tartu, Estonia. We are the only company in the world specializing in mobile positioning data for official statistics. Positium analyses mobility, tourism and smart city data, creating statistics decision-makers can use for the benefit of the society.

Asso Uibo is the Director of Regional Business Development in South Estonia at Invest Estonia. He mainly deals with expansion and digitalization projects in the wood, metal and food manufacturing industries. Having world-class universities in the region ensures a natural attraction of talent and knowledge and thus countless opportunities for companies and projects from personalised medicine to self-driving hydrogen buses and air taxis. And as a true ambassador of South Estonia, Asso represents very well this smart and laid-back attitude so utterly typical for the region.

Invest Estonia is a government agency promoting foreign investments and assisting international companies in finding business opportunities.

Aleksi Partanen is a co-founder and General Partner at Icebreaker.vc, a 140M€ venture capital fund focused in the Pre-Seed phase. Aleksi is a recovering software entrepreneur, who after exiting his own venture in 2014, started to focus on supporting other ambitious startup founders to make their vision reality. From his new home town Tallinn, Aleksi focuses on teams from Estonia, Finland and Sweden.

Kaarel is the strategic thinker and visionary behind Veriff. He keeps Veriff’s team one step ahead of fraud and competition in the dynamic world of online identification. With plenty of energy and enthusiasm, he encourages the Veriff team to stand for honesty in the digital world. In March 2020, Kaarel was named the EY Entrepreneur of the Year in Estonia. Also, Nordic Business Report named Kaarel one of the 25 most influential young entrepreneurs in Northern Europe in 2018.

Pirko Konsa has been CEO of Tallinn Science Park Tehnopol and Estonian Development Fund and has been helping to build the Estonian startup ecosystem since 2006. Since 2014, Pirko Konsa is active as an entrepreneur in developing future mobility solutions. Currently, he is the CEO of Modern Mobility, a company developing software for providing on-demand transport based on autonomous vehicles. Pirko is also a business advisor for Mindchip an Estonian startup developing self-driving drone ships (formerly known as Nyma) you will meet in Tartu soon.

Mart is an executive with 20 years of international business experience in the financial sector in SEB Group in the Baltics and Sweden, focused on business development and innovation leadership, and studied innovation management at Stanford GSB. Mart has co-founded ecosystem movements like the largest entrepreneurship program Ajujaht and Innovation Leaders Club in Estonia. He also contributes to the creation of Jõhvi School of Technology, Kood / Jõhvi.

He has personal experiences as an entrepreneur and an angel investor. From spring 2021, Mart focusing on creating a sustainable platform where research-based entrepreneurship and early-stage investors meet, rolling out UniTartu Ventures. UniTartu Ventures is a holding and investment company of the University of Tartu.

From moving sidewalks to a CBD delivery app, Anna-Liisa has spent the last decade starting futuristic businesses, quitting jobs and analysing why most of her ideas fail. Until one didn’t.

She co-founded Woola in 2020 to stop Big Oil companies from drowning us in plastic. 2 years and 3 million euros in investments later, she is the CEO of a company that uses leftover sheep wool to replace bubble wrap.

Kauri Kõrm is a Member of the Management Board and the Head of Development at Auve Tech. Auve Tech creates safe, environmentally friendly and efficient autonomous transport solutions that help decrease the ecological footprint around the world. Auve Tech has won multiple nominations in Estonia and Europe for its innovation and has produced the world’s first autonomous hydrogen vehicle.

Mari-Liis is an entrepreneur, mother, dreamer and community builder at heart. She is passionate about building an ecosystem for future founders, inventors and change makers and at present works as the co-founder and CEO of VIVITA Creativity Accelerator for Kids to empower children with the confidence to imagine and skills to create the future. Currently VIVITA runs innovation and creativity studios for kids in 12 cities across the world. Mari-Liis has also co-founded TechSisters, a non-profit with the goal to get more women excited and active in tech. In 2019 Mari-Liis was awarded with Young Female Entrepreneur of the Year title.

Martin Villig is the co-founder of Bolt. Previously, he held team lead positions at Skype and NASDAQ Tallinn Stock Exchange.

He is a leading figure in the Estonian startup community, a board member of Estonian Founders Society and a co-founder of Garage48 hackathons, Jõhvi Coding School and €3M Education Foundation to kickstart new education initiatives in Estonia.

Martin and Markus Villig have been awarded E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year in Estonia. In 2019, Martin was granted a decoration from the President of Estonia for his contribution in Estonian entrepreneurship and education.

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Triin Pikk is the Tartu 2024 programme line Tartu with Earth Manager. Her responsibilities on the European Capital of Culture team include consulting, curating projects, and developing various environmental and sustainability strategies. She advocates for organising many events in Tartu and Southern Estonia in 2024 based on the principles of sustainability, nature conservation, reuse, and valuing the richness of life and the diversity of cultures. Triin combines environmentally friendly principles with a cultural programme that will be enjoyed by thousands of Estonians and visitors from abroad. Triin believes that we can change the world through environmentally friendly cultural management.

Kati Ilves is the Artistic Director of the European Capital of Culture Tartu 2024. Kati’s ambition is to share the story of the Arts of Survival with Europe. She has put Estonia on the map of contemporary art as a curator. In 2019, she brought fashion designer Rick Owens to Estonia, where his designs were exhibited together with works by rapper Tommy Cash in Kumu. In 2017, Kati curated the Estonian pavilion at the world’s most important art event, the Venice Biennale, where Katja Novitskova’s solo exhibition “If Only You Could See What I’ve Seen with Your Eyes” depicted a high-tech dystopian world.