Hello.
It’s been over 15 years since I’ve told stories of other people. Now I finally know why.
When you turn your eyes, camera, or voice recorder towards someone, you show them that they are worthy. That their story matters. We all deserve to feel that. It can be healing!
But especially those who live in the shadows of the global interest: the hidden places in the periphery. I want to know how to shine a light on the places and the people less understood. I want to see what it takes to make them heard. I am testing with all the possible formats and ways.
To hear someone out, you need to trust them. To trust them, you need to know them. So let me tell you a little bit about my life.
And so I started traveling
After my BA studies at Tartu University (Estonia), I went to Australia for a year. I wanted to practice my English but returned to being liberated from the need to be seen as someone highly accomplished. Biking through the bushes and hitchhiking alone on a faraway continent can do that to you. Nobody seemed to care that I used to write for an Estonian weekly or that I had met an Estonian minister. They could barely find my country on a map. I was free! I could finally explore the world outside dusty newsrooms.
I decided to become a dancer for a year. I learned the art of Flamenco in Sevilla until returning to studying.
I finished my double Masters at Aarhus Universitet (Denmark) and Hamburg University (Germany), where I studied with journalists worldwide.
Since then, I have continued collaborating and working with diverse groups in newsrooms or NGOs like Greenpeace International, Reporters Without Borders, and Transparency International. The best results, I learned, come out when diverse backgrounds come together if you embrace them.
Born and brewed in Estonia, I now landed and nested in Moldova.
I once finished working as a media analyst in Amsterdam on Friday, and on Monday morning, I sat down at a news desk as a journalist in Estonia.
Jumping in cold water is what I do best (growing up by the Baltic Sea, did I have a choice?).
It has helped me grow.
My adventures showed me who I am and what matters most: connection. It’s not a secret to most people, but it took me years.
As a US State Department fellow, I spent a month listening to some of the best journalists in the US, a big part of it at the Pulitzer-winning Miami Herald.
One of the biggest Estonian newspapers hired me as the country’s first data journalist. With our small team, we created interactive visualizations for the daily news. I fell in love with Excel. I soon discovered a bug for the business and start-up world.
Over the weekends, we went to teach Estonian at a refugee center in Estonia with friends.
I speak fluent English and Estonian, can converse in Romanian and Spanish, and understand some Russian and German.