Mihhail Kõlvart is an Estonian politician. He is the current mayor of Tallinn, Estonia, a position he has held since April 2019, after the resignation of Taavi Aas.
Life
Kõlvart was born in Kyzylorda, Kazakh SSR, to an Estonian father and a Korean/Chinese mother who were both in exile. His father, Ülo Kõlvart, was the founder of the Estonian National Taekwondo Association in 1992 and was its first president from 1992 to 1996. His mother, Liidia Kõlvart, who was of Korean and Chinese descent, was a teacher and later was awarded honorary citizenship of the city of Tallinn. He moved with his parents to the Estonian SSR when he was three. He graduated from school in Tallinn Secondary School No. 15 in 1995. He studied jurisprudence and later business law at private universities in Tallinn.
Athletic career
Kõlvart made a name for himself as a top athlete nationally and internationally in the disciplines of boxing, kickboxing and Taekwondo, of which he has a black belt in. Starting in 1993, he worked in Tallinn as a Taekwondo coach. In 1996, he was elected President of the Estonian National Taekwondo Association. In 2016, he became a member of the Executive Committee of the Estonian Olympic Committee.
Political career
From 1999 to 2002, Kõlvart was a member of the district council of the Lasnamäe district of Tallinn. In 2008, he joined the Estonian Centre Party. In 2009, he was elected to the Tallinn city council. He was particularly committed to youth and sport and the rights of ethnic minorities in Tallinn, and as such, has made him popular with the Russian-speaking minority of Tallinn. He was elected to the Riigikogu in 2011, of which he was a member of until 2019. In April 2011, he resigned as a deputy mayor of Tallinn to serve in the Riigikogu. Later on, from 2017 to 2019, he was the chairman of the Tallinn City Council. He resigned in April 2019, as he was elected mayor of Tallinn on 11 April after the resignation of mayor Taavi Aas to serve in the cabinet of Jüri Ratas. On 30 September 2019, he was made an honorary citizen of Seoul, South Korea by Seoul's mayor Park Won-soon.
