Nele Leosk, ambassador-at-large for digital affairs at the Estonian Foreign Ministry since 2020, reflects on Estonia and e-Governance.
Nele holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences, which she obtained from the European University Institute in Italy. Her doctoral research focused on analyzing the interplay between technology and governance in OECD and European Union member states. She has been a Fulbright-Schuman scholar at the National Center for Digital Government at the University of Massachusetts and at the Governance Lab at New York University (USA), where she studied trends in information society development in the EU and the US and their potential synergies. She lectures on technology policy and foreign policy aspects of technology.
She has worked at the e-Governance Academy as a program director, overseeing the ICT in Education program, and prior to that, at the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications. Nele Leosk has advised senior government officials on public sector reform and e-governance issues in more than 20 countries and has extensive experience in evaluating state reforms and e-governance programs for various international organizations. She has supported digital transformation efforts in over 40 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. In addition to her government work, she has been active in the private sector, academia, and international organizations, including the UN, OECD, and the European Commission. Inspired by female leaders and being an inspiration herself, she actively participates in various networks dedicated to promoting women in technology.
Over the past 20 years, Nele Leosk has been dedicated to fostering open, inclusive, prosperous, and secure digital societies. As an advocate for open and inclusive digital societies, she is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Technology Policy, a leader of GovStack Estonia, chair of the Digital Cooperation and Diplomacy Network, head of the Global Standards Symposium, and a member of the Open Government Partnership steering group. She is actively involved in women’s technology networks and mentors young female technology leaders in both the private and public sectors. She continues to lecture on the legal aspects of the information society, technology policy, and technology diplomacy.
In her current role as Ambassador-at-Large for Digital Affairs, she is responsible for developing, managing, and implementing Estonia’s digital diplomacy, combining innovation, economy, democracy, and security. Operating at the intersection of public policy and technology, she leads global multistakeholder collaborations focusing on critical areas such as data, artificial intelligence, and digital public infrastructure. She is a co-founder and co-leader of the GovStack Initiative and the Women in GovTech Challenge.
Source: https://2024.egovconference.ee/speakers/nele-leosk/link opens on new page