Tommi Laitio

Tommi Laitio is the inaugural Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellow at the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University. The fellowship is an opportunity for innovative public sector leaders to take two years to reflect on their work and develop new knowledge. Tommi Laitio brings to the fellowship a decade of senior city leadership experience from Helsinki. He joined the City of Helsinki as Director of Youth Affairs and was later elected as the first Executive Director of Culture and Leisure – with an overall responsibility for arts and culture, sports, public library, and youth work. Before joining the government, he worked for a think tank in Helsinki, ran a youth video festival in Amsterdam, and worked as a newspaper journalist. During his two-year fellowship at Johns Hopkins, he speaks and writes on his experience in public service and carries out new international research on the skills and practices local governments need for building partnerships for parks and public libraries. Laitio holds an MA in Political Science from University of Helsinki and an EMBA from Aalto University.