About The Founder

Ester Kannelmäe is a strategic communication and PR consultant, creative director, and editor based in Tallinn, Estonia — and the founder of SARBAH and HABRAS.

She trained as a fashion designer at the Estonian Academy of Arts, graduating with a Master's degree, which is where the visual thinking comes from — the instinct to read a room, a brand, or a brief in images before words. That has never really left, regardless of what the job title said.

Her career has moved across fashion styling and art direction, editorial leadership at Anne & Stiil — Estonia's largest lifestyle magazine — communications and PR for H&M Estonia across seven years including the brand's market entry, PR for Estonia's e-Residency programme, and B2B communications for the City of Tallinn.

She writes on social, cultural and fashion topics for Estonia's top publications like Eesti Ekspress, Anne & Stiil, portail.ee and delfi.ee. She lectures at the Estonian Academy of Arts on fashion and communication topics, designs for her brand HABRAS, and occasionally works on theatre productions as a costume designer. She speaks fluent Estonian, English, and Finnish.

She describes her career not as a linear progression but as a kaleidoscope — many different experiences, each one a fragment, and a story that becomes clear when you step back. The pattern is always the same: understanding what something really is, and finding the clearest, most honest way to show it to the world. She is, by her own admission, an incurable info hoarder — perpetually curious, perpetually learning, as likely to pick up something useful from a client or a collaborator as from any other source.

SARBAH is where she does that now — directly, for the people and organisations that need it most.