Tommi Laitio

Tommi Laitio is the inaugural Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellow at Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University. The fellowship offers accomplished public sector practitioners the space and time to reflect on their experience and actively contribute to public sector knowledge and practice. Laitio joined Helsinki’s city government as Director of Youth Affairs and was later elected as the first Executive Director of Culture and Leisure to merge seven departments and deliver 20 million resident experiences with a team of 1800 professionals and a budget of $270M USD. The department has won international and national awards for innovations in youth employment, public libraries, citizen engagement, cultural access, covid-19 response and increasing physical activity. Laitio’s contributions to serving his country were recognized in 2021 with the medal for Knight First Class of the Order of the White Rose of Finland. Before joining the city, he ran the media and youth program for the European Cultural Foundation in Amsterdam, worked on sustainable lifestyles and democratic innovation at think tank Demos Helsinki and as a journalist for Finland´s leading daily newspaper. He holds an MA in Political Science and an Executive MBA. He lives in Baltimore with his husband.