Ilja Riekki

Ilja Riekki works as an Innovation Policy Expert at the Finnish Institute of Public Management (HAUS Ltd.), contributing to the Africa-Europe Digital Innovation Bridge 2.0 (AEDIB 2.0) project, stationed in Kigali, Rwanda, at the Smart Africa Secretariat. His work focuses on supporting and capacitating African policymakers and ecosystem leaders in designing, implementing, and evaluating policies that strengthen digital entrepreneurship and innovation and development of thriving startup ecosystems as part of the broader Team Europe Initiative on Digital Economy and Society under the European Union Global Gateway Strategy.

Ilja brings extensive experience from international development and education policy. Before joining HAUS, he worked at UNESCO Headquarters, where he designed and implemented global and regional initiatives related to digitalization of vocational, non-formal, and higher education systems. Prior to this he managed projects in the Asia-Pacific region from UNESCO’s Bangkok office, focusing on equitable access to education, lifelong learning, and flexible digital learning solutions, policies and international agreements.

Earlier in his career, Ilja served as Head of Innovation and Partnerships at the entrepreneurship programme of Aalto University especially in research commercialization and development of executive education programmes. He has also gained private sector experience through consulting work in Shanghai and with an education startup connecting Finnish and Chinese markets. Ilja holds a master’s degree in education, has studied economics in an MBA programme at Lingnan College, Sun Yat-Sen University, and completed visiting studies at Yonsei University in South Korea and the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute in Italy and London School of Economics (LSE).