Dalia Grybauskaite

Dalia Grybauskaite was elected president of Lithuania on May 17, 2009, the country's first female president and the first president of Lithuania to be reelected for a second consecutive term. She held the position until 2019.

Grybauskaite was born in Vilnius on March 1, 1956. She studied political economy at Leningrad University. In 1988, she defended her Ph.D. thesis at Moscow Academy of Public Sciences. She holds the academic qualification of doctor of social sciences.

In 1991, she completed a special course for senior executives at Georgetown University in Washington. That year, she was also appointed director of the European Department at the Ministry of International Economic Relations. In 1993, she served as director of the Economic Relations Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A year later, she was appointed envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary at the Lithuanian Mission to the European Union.

From 1996 to 1999, Grybauskaite acted as minister plenipotentiary at the Lithuanian Embassy in the United States. She served as deputy finance minister from 1999 to 2000, deputy foreign minister from 2000–2001, and finance minister from 2001 to 2004. In 2004, she was appointed as the EU commissioner responsible for financial programming and budget. As a European Union commissioner, she launched one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the EU: she initiated the reform of the Union's budget to ensure a more expedient, efficient and transparent use of funds. On February 26, 2009, Grybauskaite announced that she would run for Lithuania's presidential office. In the first round of voting, she was elected president of the Republic of Lithuania in a landslide victory.

Sources:

Council of Women World Leaders (n.d.). “DALIA GRYBAUSKAITĖ” Council of Women World Leaders. Retrieved December 2, 2022. https://www.councilwomenworldleaders.org/dalia-grybauskait279.html

Hollar, S. (2012, June 1). “Dalia Grybauskaite” Britannica. Retrieved December 2, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dalia-Grybauskaite

Jiang, L. (n.d.). “Dr. Dalia Grybauskaitė, Former President of Lithuania” Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Retrieved December 2, 2022. https://eca.state.gov/ivlpprofiles/dr-dalia-grybauskaite