Our team
Team
Kadri Maasik
CEO
kadri@edtechestonia.ee
Gerli Veeleid
Community development manager
gerli@edtechestonia.ee
Gerli is a passionate entrepreneur and educational professional with more than 10 years of experience in Education.
During her past 5 years, she has especially focused on expanding the entrepreneurial knowledge in Harjumaa Education System by teaching Economics and Business in high schools from the practical perspective and developing a successful Student-Company Program and an Internship Program for High School students. Gerli has been a key person to build the collaboration across Companies- Educational Institutions and local municipalities in Harju County and leading necessary discussions for projects in order to support young people in building their future careers.
In addition, Gerli also contributes directly to education by being a Business and Economy teacher and lecturer, while also providing personal mentorship for Student Companies, Startups, and NGOs.
She is an Intrapreneurial person who truly believes that moving forward with inner motivation can move mountains, but to find that motivation there is a need for an individual approach.
Gerli is a true people’s person. As a Community Development Manager, her focus is to take care of the needs of the community and its every member- from building trustful connections to an actual change and impact. There is a solution for everything!
Sabina Sägi
Head of research cooperation
sabina@edtechestonia.ee
Sabina holds a degree in Slavonic Studies and Film (with a focus on TV directing) from the University of Glasgow (Scotland). She has also completed graduate work at Charles University (Czech Republic), Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg (Germany) and Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (Israel).
Having lived in 8 countries, Sabina has taught in a vocational school in Bulgaria, headed a film museum in Germany and taught animation in Serbia (among other adventures).
After a decade abroad, Sabina was in charge of Estonia’s implementation of the European Commission’s Erasmus+ KA2 cooperation partnerships in higher education. Furthermore, she joined international fintech Wise, working with the French and German markets.
Her day-to-day work includes wrangling 50+ edtech startups and their relevant partners from the Ministry of Education and Research to universities, both in Estonia and abroad.
Fluent in German, English and Estonian, Sabina has hosted and moderated international seminars and panels in Estonia, Switzerland, UK and Austria, with topics ranging from women is the startup sector, Baltic&African business relations to government and private sector cooperation. She has hosted 50+ nationally distributed podcast episodes.
EdTech Estonia board
Märt Aro
Since 2004, Märt has established several organisations and companies in the area of education development.
The latest solution, DreamApply admissions management platform is used by 300 universities from 35 countries, serving millions of users a year. The most recent NGO Nordic EdTech Forum - N8 brings together 140 founders of education innovation initiatives from eight Northern European countries with the aim of sharing experience and fostering cooperation.
In order to drive education forward Märt regularly collaborates with: Estonian Ministry of Education and Research, Bolt, People-Centered Internet, UN, European Commission.
Liis Siiroja
Liis is a co-founder and CEO of KideoCall. KideoCall is helping expat families to develop kids’ native language and cultural connection via online playgroups. As a parent of multicultural kids, she is familiar with the challenges of raising kids abroad and in multilingual settings.
Liis has a strong background in communications, but has always been attracted by education. Prior to founding KideoCall, she served as the communications manager of the educational program Tagasi Kooli (Back to School) and helped to introduce the world of work to students. As an active member of the Estonian Montessori Association, she advocates for interest-based learning and self-education with guidance. During her younger years, she gained experience working with children in various settings, including as a camp counselor, assistant in a kindergarten, and substitute teacher.
At EdTech Estonia, Liis focuses on subjects related to language learning.
Oleg Shvaikovsky
After 25 years in IT and telecom field, Oleg is now developing education sphere.
In 2020 Oleg returned to Estonia after having established Nortal´s new office overseas in Seattle, USA.
Oleg is teaching physics at St. John´s School in Tallinn, which he also co-founded. Besides teaching he is an active EdTEch investor and entrepreneur with deep educational domain expertise, investing in geeks and ideas that disrupt the status quo of traditional learning. Among his investments are Praktikal, Edumus, ALPA Kids, etc.
Mentoring, teaching and leading are part of his daily practice.
Andres Mellik
Andres Mellik is the founder and CEO of Cognuse. Andres has 20 years of experience in e-learning applications, embedded systems design and test and serious/educational games. He founded Juku Lab LLC, en e-learning company at the age of 24 and worked with the earliest standards in e-learning extensively (SCORM 1.2/2004, xAPI) while putting a lot of focus in exhaustive testing of those standards for highly scalable learning management systems. Those experiences have proven invaluable in introducing more consumable and accessible clinical information to hospitals. Andres holds BSc/MSc from Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia and M.Eng. from the University of Lugano in Switzerland. Additionally, he has completed research terms at UEC, Tokyo, Japan and UC San Diego in California, USA. Andres is a long-term member of the IEEE as well as the founding member of the Sleep Technology Council under the National Sleep Foundation in the USA.