Kersti Kaljulaid served as the President of the Republic of Estonia from 2016 to 2021. Since 2024, she has been serving as the president of the Estonian Olympic Committee.
Before her term as president, she was a Member of the European Court of Auditors, advised Prime Minister Mart Laar, and held various high-level positions in energy, investment banking, and telecom. With degrees in genetic engineering and economy, she was a member of the Supervisory Board of the Estonian Genome Centre and the Council Chair of the University of Tartu from 2012 to 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. She was the first Estonian featured on Forbes' list of the World's 100 Most Powerful Women.
She serves on several prestigious boards, including the Munich Security Conference, Yalta European Strategy, GLOBSEC Advisory Council, Microsoft Technology & National Security Advisory Council, Multiverse AI, and Stockholm Environment Institute.
In 2021, she founded the President Kaljulaid Foundation, advancing democracy, empowering the vulnerable, and navigating digitalisation's societal impact. Since the war in Ukraine, the Foundation has raised about €400,000 for Ukrainian journalism and education.
Kaljulaid is a sought-after speaker on digital, security and foreign-policy topics. As president, her guiding principle was: "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."