60 minutes with Kersti Kaljulaid

PSIA is honoured to welcome Kersti Kalijulaid, former President of Estonia (2016-2021) and current United Nations Secretary-General's Global Advocate for Every Woman Every Child since 2021.

Following a short address, she will take questions from students, in an exchange moderated by PSIA Dean Arancha González.

Kersti Kaljulaid served as the President of the Republic of Estonia from 2016-2021. During her time in office, she made her presence felt in both her homeland and the international arena. Previously she had been serving as a Member of the European Court of Auditors, advising Prime Minister Mart Laar and holding different top-level positions in energy, investment banking and the telecom sector. Genetic engineer and economist by education, she has been a member of the Supervisory Board of the Estonian Genome Center and the Council Chair of the University of Tartu from 2012 to 2016.

In the summer of 2021, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed President Kaljulaid to the position of Global Advocate for the ‘Every Woman Every Child’ strategy on the health and well-being of women, children and adolescents around the world for the next two years. She was also the first Estonian to be featured in the Forbes World's 100 Most Powerful Women. Kersti Kaljulaid has become a sought-after speaker 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 of human rights, the rule of law, freedom of speech and democracy. One of the principles in the office of president has been the one she set out upon 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.”