Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar

- Former Ambassador at Large for Cyber Diplomacy and Director General of the Cyber Diplomacy Department, Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Former Head of Cyber Policy Coordination, European External Action Service
- Former Cyber Defence Policy Advisor, NATO HQ International Staff
- Former Executive Director of the National Cyber Security Council and Senior Advisor, Estonian Ministry of Defense

Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar is director of the Digital Society Institute at ESMT Berlin. She has published extensively in the Journal of Cyber Policy and The Estonian Foreign Policy Yearbook, produced numerous publications at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence and the European External Action Service and is author of the books 'Botnets: How to Fight the Ever-Growing Threat on a Technical Level' and 'Global and Regional Security Challenges: A Baltic Outlook' with Tiago Marques. Heli was Ambassador at Large for Cyber Diplomacy and Director General of the Cyber Diplomacy Department at the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and worked in several roles involving cyber policies and diplomacy at NATO HQ International Staff, the European External Action Service and the Estonian Ministry of Defense. During her years of service, Heli introduced cyber security as a separate topic to the United Nations Security Council in the context of preserving international security and peace, initiated and led negotiations on the 2013 and 2017 EU Cybersecurity Strategies, prepared the first whole-of-government national cyber security strategy in the world and built a new cyber organisation in Estonia after the 2007 large-scale cyber attacks, created the cyber diplomacy entity in the EU External Action Service together with a broader network on international cyber policy coordination within the European Union, developed the first comprehensive NATO Cyber Defence Policy in 2011, set up an academic department and graduate programs on International Security Studies and led the preparation for Estonian NATO accession at senior level. Heli is a PhD candidate at the University of Helsinki, and graduated with a M.A. in Political Science from The Central European University (CEU)'s Budapest College and a B.A. in Sociology from Tartu University in Estonia. During her studies, she received a Fulbright Fellowship for the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and was recipient of an Open Society Fellowship in 1995. She was chosen by Politico to be among the 28 most influential Europeans of 2018 for setting up EU cyber policies and received The Estonian Ministry of Defence Service Cross in Gold for her services in government. Being a prolific writer and speaker, she regularly writes op-eds and gives interviews in leading international newspapers like POLITICO, NPR, Mother Jones and The Washington Post and frequently contributes to national media outlets such as ERR News, Majandus, Arvamus, Tagesspiegel Background, GovInsider and Ara en Castellano.