I’ve always thought that there’s great power when like-minded people get together to work on the same goal. The roots of that go back to my childhood when my friends and I organized class activities and were happily involved in different competitions. The understanding grew stronger in a university, living abroad, and when the world opened up to endless possibilities. And by the time I found myself in work life, I understood that people are everything and there are always some communities formed. In my earlier career, I had the opportunity to build and develop the continuing education program in the Tartu Health Care College almost from scratch. I managed to bring together a community of health care specialists who wanted to learn more. Studying Educational Management at the University of Tartu at the same time made me realize that the technology world is something I need to discover.

My life took me to the United States where I worked in one ed-tech startup and got to know how startups work in super fast-paced environments. Again, I created the processes for the community of people who wanted to learn languages and do it effectively with private lessons. Half a year later I found myself in New York University Edtech Accelerator StartEd, where I actively took a role as a community manager and eventually managed over 300+ speakers for New York’s largest education innovation event – EdTech Week. Back in Estonia, I was excited to join one of the startups in business technology, where once again I understood that getting to know people and their needs about what they’re looking for in technology is the key. But you can’t escape community life, so at the same time I started to organize Startup Week Tallinn with many other ambitious volunteers and that helped me realize where I belong. Parallel to that I was also the President of the Estonian alumni association at the Baltic-American Freedom Foundation and worked with another group of talented individuals.

Not long after this experience, I joined Startup Estonia, a governmental initiative to supercharge the Estonian startup ecosystem. Fast forward 2,5 years of countless community meetups, and big startup conferences in Estonia and all around the world, and being in the middle of one of the fast-growing startup sectors, I’m here. Living and breathing startup communities. I’m now the CEO of Latitude59, which is one of the most international and important flagship conferences in the Baltics and Nordics region. It gives me a chance to bring the community together from another angle and I am very excited to see where we can go together. I’m an active Venture Associate in The Better Fund – an ESG-focused fund, helping female founders and gender-balanced teams in the CEE region get access to capital to scale world-changing ideas. World Summit Awards (WSA) is also something I’m proudly part of as Estonia’s national expert.

My biggest passion is building communities and there are so many opportunities to share what I’ve learned during my work and life experience.

I know it’s not easy to build a community, furthermore how to develop and keep it active, but people really are everything and it’s so worth it. If you feel that you need an expert in anything that comes close to: community building, development, ecosystem mapping, or organizing community events or you need a mentor in your startup journey – I’m here and happy to help.