Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar

Ms. Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar is Distinguished Fellow, the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). She was previously the Director of the Digital Society Institute, European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Berlin and Estonia’s Ambassador at Large for Cyber Diplomacy, and Director of the Cyber Diplomacy Department at the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After holding several senior roles at the MOD, she led the restructuring of the Estonia’s cyber system and built national public-private partnerships for cyber resilience. She prepared a comprehensive NATO cyber defense policy and was responsible for developing European Union’s external cyber relations and global capacity building programs at the European External Action Service.

Ambassador Tiirmaa-Klaar is a graduate of the University of Tartu, and earned a master’s degree in International Relations and National Security from the George Washington University as a Fulbright Fellow.