GC REAIM Chair
Kersti Kaljulaid served as the President of Estonia from 2016 to 2021, making a significant impact both domestically and internationally. Before her presidency, she was a Member of the European Court of Auditors, advised Prime Minister Mart Laar, and held senior roles in energy, investment banking, and telecom sectors. With degrees in genetic engineering and economics, she has been involved with the Estonian Genome Center and chaired the Council of the University of Tartu (2012-2016).
In 2021, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed her as the Global Advocate for the ‘Every Woman Every Child’ strategy. In 2023, she co-chaired the UN High-level Panel on the Teaching Profession. Kaljulaid is the first Estonian to be featured on Forbes’ list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.
She is a member of several prestigious boards. These include the Munich Security Conference Security Innovation Board and Advisory Council, Yalta European Strategy, the International Advisory Board of the Atlantic Council, the Global Tech Security Commission, the Centre for European Reform the GLOBSEC Advisory Council, the Microsoft Technology & National Security Advisory Council, and the Stockholm Environment Institute Board.
In 2021, she founded the President Kaljulaid Foundation, an NGO and think-tank for Advancing Democracy, Empowering the Vulnerable, and Navigating the Societal Impact of Digitalization. Since the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine, the Foundation has raised around €400,000 for Ukrainian causes, including journalism and education.
Kaljulaid is a sought-after speaker and moderator at high-level forums on digital, security, and foreign policy topics and more broadly for analysing and interpreting societal and economic change. President Kaljulaid is a vocal advocate for human rights, the rule of law, freedom of speech, and democracy. One of her guiding principles during her presidency was articulated during her inauguration: “I am never silent when our security is in question, when our freedoms are at stake, or when those weaker than us are treated unjustly”
