Kaimar Karu

• Digital Transformation Leader | AI Governance and Implementation Adviser | Speaker | ITIL (Version 5) Lead Author

Kaimar is a strategic adviser on digital transformation for enterprises and governments, with nearly 30 years of hands-on experience. He has spent a significant part of his career shaping how organisations manage and improve digital services, and when AXELOS took ownership of ITIL, he joined from Skype, where he had spent three years enhancing the service experience for 100M+ active users.

He led the strategy and development of the ITIL framework, aligning it with DevOps and Agile principles, and drawing on the Cynefin framework to ground the guidance in how organisations deal with complexity. He was lead author of ITIL Practitioner for v3 and co-authored Sustainability in Digital and IT as well as Practice Guide updates for ITIL 4.

For the newly launched ITIL (Version 5), he is lead author of ITIL Transformation, co-author of ITIL Strategy, and contributor to the ITIL AI Governance publication.

His strategic advisory work led to his appointment as Estonia’s Minister of Foreign Trade and Information Technology, with responsibility for national cyber security, state digitalisation, and policymaking during the pandemic, including sponsoring Estonia’s Hack the Crisis initiative, which scaled into The Global Hack across 100 countries.

He holds a degree in Philosophy and is a frequent keynote speaker at leadership and technology events worldwide, where he addresses decision-making in complex environments and the societal impact of AI, including fairness and transparency.