Your partner in unlocking
European and transatlantic
resilience
Advising on opportunities and best practices on holistic digital
resilience across all sectors and national infrastructure.
Ieva’s Story
Starting with her first job working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Latvia, Ieva was quickly assigned to a team responsible for brokering Latvia’s accession to NATO. Forging ties with US policymaking organizations and the world’s most eminent security organization, and ensuring that Latvia ticked all the boxes, Ieva gained first-hand experience into the demands of a secure nation and working with transatlantic partners. Her experience and professional acquaintances she met along the way paved the way for a career in national and international security and resilience, and developed a unique sensibility and respect for collaborating with the United States.
As her capacity grew, she was eventually entrusted with organizing a globally meaningful event – the NATO Summit. She was also tasked with implementing and setting up the NATO Strategic Communication Center of Excellence, which to this day is an authority on disinformation and hybrid warfare.
Somewhere along the way, Ieva became the First Lady of Estonia, which gave her a front row seat to observing arguably one of the most rapid national digital transformations the world has seen. This also went hand-in-hand with pro-bono work, which centered around cybersecurity awareness and education for youth.
She has worked across the globe, on an EU advisory mission to Baku advising the then-president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili. She has worked in Azerbaijan, and collaborates with Taiwanese partners. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Ieva has lent her hand to the cause in an advisory function to Ukraine, and has also stepped up as director of Ukraine’s CISO Campus program.
Her skills, network, and knowledge are appreciated by both corporate organizations and nations alike, and she works with both segments to improve digital resilience capabilities in organizations and their leaders. But she also makes sure to devote a good amount of time to educating society through various programs run by the Ilvesa Foundation.
Career highlights:
- Brokering Latvia’s accession to NATO in 2004, a role she was awarded with the Republic of Latvia’s Cross of Recognition
- Establishing the NATO Strategic Communication Center of Excellence (Stratcom COE) as Lead Integrator – an institution that works successfully to the highest standards to this day
- EU advisory mission in Baku, providing policy advice on good governance, democracy and regional resilience
- Advising Georgia’s Presidents Mikheil Saakashvili team on transatlantic integration and democratic continuous reforms
- Establishing a cyber education program together with Google.org for the Riga Technical University
- Asked to be the advisor to the President of Latvia, Egils Levits
- Working with the US to provide Ukraine with advisory to build out a state-of-the-art digital resilience infrastructure policy/approach
- On-the-ground advisory in Kyiv during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to work with and support Ukraine’s digital resilience team
- Sits on the advisory boards of world-renowned big tech orgsanizations in a cybersecurity and resilience capacity
Things Ieva believes in:
- Digital resilience is relevant at every age
- Cybersecurity is only as strong as the weakest link – educating all communities is critical
- International-scale resilience starts with local-scale resilience
- To be resilient, you have to be digital
- In an era of geopolitical rivalry, democracy is strong when united across both sides of the Atlantic