Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar

Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar is Director of Digital Society Institute at the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin since January 2022. She was serving as Ambassador for Cyber Diplomacy and Director General for the Cyber Diplomacy Department at the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2018-2021, where she led the Estonian efforts to promote norms of responible state behavior in cyberspace at the United Nations Security Council. Up to Fall 2018, she was working as a Head of Cyber Policy Coordination at the European External Action Service where she steered and coordinated EU external relations on cyber issues and co-led preparations of European Cyber Security Startegies since 2012. She set up EU strategic cyber dialogues with the US, India, Brazil, Japan, South Korea as well as other international organisations. She also kicked off EU global cyber capacity building programs and steered the development of the EU Cyber Diplomacy Toolbox to bolster EU response to malicious cyber activities. In 2011, she was assigned to the NATO International Staff to prepare the NATO Cyber Defence Policy.

She has been working on cyber security since 2007 when she led the development of the Estonian Cyber Security Strategy. In 2008-2010 she coordinated the implementation of the Estonian strategy, managed the National Cyber Security Council and led the establishment of Estonia’s national cyber resilience structures as well as building public-private partnerships for cyber security. In her earlier career, she held various managerial positions at the Estonian Ministry of Defence and the Tallinn University since 1995. She was a Fulbright Scholar at the George Washington University and has published in several academic journals throughout her career.