Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Toomas Hendrik Ilves became president of Estonia in 2006; he is the third person to hold the post since the Baltic republic regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Ilves was born in 1953 to Estonian parents who had fled the Soviet regime that installed itself in the Baltic nation following World War II. The family immigrated to the United States and settled in New Jersey. Ilves attended Columbia University as an undergrad and received his MA from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1984, he joined the staff of Radio Free Europe as an analyst and researcher. This news service, based in Munich, Germany, broadcast anticommunist programming to the Soviet-controlled countries of Eastern Europe during the cold-war decades that followed World War II. Four years after he joined Radio Free Europe, Ilves was named head of its Estonian desk, a post he held until 1993.

From 1993-1996, Ilves served as newly independent Estonia's ambassador to the United States, Canada, and Mexico in Washington, D.C. He became Estonia's minister for foreign affairs in 1996. In March of 1999, after new parliamentary elections, Ilves returned to his post as foreign minister, serving until 2002. In 2004, Ilves was elected to the European Parliament as one of the first official Estonian delegates sworn in when the country became a member state of the European Union. In March of 2006, he announced his candidacy in upcoming presidential elections. He served as President from 2006-2016. During his presidency, Ilves was appointed to serve in several high positions in the field of ICT in the European Union. He served as chairman of the EU Task Force on eHealth from 2011 to 2012 and was chairman of the European Cloud Partnership Steering Board at the invitation of the European Commission from 2012 to 2014. In 2013 he chaired the High-Level Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms convened by ICANN.

From 2014 to 2015 Ilves was the co-chair of the advisory panel of the World Bank's World Development Report 2016 "Digital Dividends" and was also the chair of World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Cyber Security beginning in June 2014. Ilves now co-chairs The World Economic Forum working group The Global Futures Council on Blockchain Technology. In 2017 he joined Stanford University as a Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.