Karin Künnapas

For the past 10 years, KARIN KÜNNAPAS has been active in the field of startups and has thus become acquainted with business development and investing. She has studied at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga and, in addition to that, has an academic degree in history from her studies at the University of Tartu. Karin has also worked in the Estonian Business Angels Network and in the European Innovation Academy, where she organised international programmes for more than 1000 speakers annually. The aim of these programmes was to develop an existing idea into a startup. This undertaking turned out to be popular around the world: programmes were held in Portugal, Italy, Qatar, Hong Kong, and China; the mentors were from the Silicon Valley and Europe (including Estonia).

At the moment, Karin is leading kood/Jõhvi: a new type of coding school which has its roots in the private sector and functions without teachers, relying on independent studying. Since educational development has always been an important topic for Karin and kood/Jõhvi is an innovative phenomenon on the Estonian educational field, the development of such a project has given her a lot of excitement. Right now there are about 500 people from different fields of life studying in the school. The youngest of them is 18 and the eldest 62 years old. By the year 2031 Karin would like to see kood/Jõhvi educating at least 2000 students per year.

Karin has also been an active philanthropist (both in Estonia and on an international level) for the past decade through LEO Club Tallinn. For example, she has been part of the charity campaign that provides dental hygiene products for underprivileged families, and the annual Lapsed Kooli (Children to School) campaign which aims to collect school supplies for multi-child families.

As for her hobbies, Karin really likes to travel: even though she has already visited 42 countries around the world, she feels that there are still enough new places she would like to discover. Hence, she tries to travel every month. She is also a fervent reader and does not like to limit herself to one specific genre. But when she needs a break from the constant buzz of her everyday life and wants to let her brain rest for a bit, she simply focuses on solving jigsaw puzzles: it is an activity she finds to be both relaxing and challenging.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kunnapas/

Kood/Jõhvi – kood.tech