Luukas Ilves has led a cosmopolitan life: from growing up in Munich, Germany, Washington D.C., and Tallinn, graduating from Stanford University, completing compulsory military service in the Estonian Air Defence Battalion, coordinating European Union digital and cyber legislation and policy in Brussels, working in one of Estonia’s premier tech companies to becoming the "chief information officer" of Estonia's government, while speaking Estonian, English, German, and French.
Luukas Ilves was born in Munich, Germany in 1987 when his father was working for Radio Free Europe, and he lived there the first five years of his life. At home, his father spoke Estonian to him, and his mother English. As he spoke German in kindergarten, when the family moved back to the US in 1993 for his father to become the Estonian Ambassador to the US, he attended The German International School in Washington DC until grade four. He then moved with his parents to Estonia at age nine and attended grades five and six at The Tallinn English College, or in Estonian, Inglise Kolledž — his first and only formal instruction in Estonian. Luukas stated that while his spoken Estonian was passable when he started attending Inglise Kolledž, he received a crash course in Estonian grammar, reading. and writing.
