Category: International Leader / page 7

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf


Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has served as the 24th president of Liberia and the first elected female head of state in Africa since 2006. In 2011, Sirleaf received a Nobel Peace Prize for her peace work in Liberia and work for women's rights. Sirleaf was born in Monrovia on October 29, 1938. She grew up in Liberia and attended high school at the College of West Africa in Monrovia. She studied at Madison Business College, the University of Colorado and Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, where she obtained a master's […]
Erna Solberg
Erna Solberg


Erna Solberg has served as prime minister of Norway since October 16, 2013, the second female to hold that position. Solberg was born February 24, 1961. In her final year in high school, she was elected to the board of the School Student Union of Norway, and in her final year in college, she led the Students' League of the Conservative Party in Bergen. She graduated in 1986 with a cand.mag (Master of Arts) degree in sociology, political science, statistics and economics from the University of Bergen. Solberg began her […]
Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi


Aung San Suu Kyi served as the first state counsellor of Myanmar from 2016-2021. On Feb. 1, 2021, she was arrested by the Myanmar military after they declared the November 2020 general election results fraudulent and imposed a one-year state of emergency. Suu Kyi was born in Rangoon, Burma – now Yangon, Myanmar – on June 19, 1945. Her father is known as the founder of independent Burma (1948) and is beloved in that country. Her mother had been active in women's political groups before marrying Aung San, and the […]
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa


Mother Teresa was one of the great servants of humanity. She was an Albanian Catholic nun who came to India, founded the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, and attained Indian citizenship. Her selfless work among the poverty-stricken people of Kolkata (Calcutta) is an inspiration for people all over the world and she was honored with Nobel Prize for her work. Mother Teresa's original name was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. She was born on August 27, 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia. Her father was a successful merchant and she was youngest of the […]
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher


Margaret Thatcher became the first (and for two decades the only) woman to lead a major Western democracy. She won three successive general elections and served as Great Britain's prime minister for more than eleven years (1979-90), a record unmatched in the twentieth century. Thatcher was born in 1925 in Grantham, England. She attended a local state school and continued onto Oxford, where she studied chemistry at Somerville College (1943-47). She ran as the Conservative candidate for the strong Labour seat of Dartford in the general elections of 1950 and […]
Helle Thorning-Schmidt
Helle Thorning-Schmidt


Helle Thorning-Schmidt served as prime minister of Denmark from 2011 to 2015 and the leader of the Social Democrats from 2005 to 2015. She is the first woman to hold either post. Thorning-Schmidt was born December 14, 1966 in Rødovre, Denmark. She earned a master's degree in European studies in 1993 from the College of Europe in Brugge, Belgium and a Candidate of Politics degree from the University of Copenhagen in 1994. Thorning-Schmidt worked as a consultant for the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions from 1997 to1999 and served as […]
Liz Truss
Liz Truss


Mary Elizabeth “Liz” Truss served as the prime minister of the United Kingdom from Sept. 6-Oct. 25, 2022, the shortest-serving prime minister in the U.K.'s history. Truss was born on July 26, 1975, in Oxford, England. She studied philosophy, politics and economics at Merton College in Oxford, graduating in 1996. She worked as an accountant for Shell from 1996-2000. Truss was a member of the Liberal Democrats Party before joining the Conservative Party in 1996. She was elected as a councillor in Greenwich in 2006, serving until 2010. She has […]
Yulia Tymoshenko
Yulia Tymoshenko


Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko served as the prime minister of Ukraine twice: January to September 2005 and again from December 2007 until March 2010. Tymoshenko was Ukraine's first female prime minister. Tymoshenko was born on November 27, 1960, in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine). Tymoshenko studied at Dnipropetrovsk State University with a major in economics-cybernetics in the Department of Economics. In 1999 she graduated with a doctorate from Kyiv National Economic University. In 1995, Tymoshenko became the president of United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU). At the end of 1996, she […]
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria


Queen Victoria was queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837 to 1901, and empress of India from 1877 to 1901. This is the second longest reign of any of British monarch in history. Victoria was born on May 24, 1819 in London, England. Victoria became the heir apparent after her father died. Her father, Edward, had three older brothers; however, none of them had legitimate heirs to the throne. After the death of King William IV, Victoria became queen at the age of 18. Victoria […]
Vaira Vike-Freiberga
Vaira Vike-Freiberga


Dr. Vaira Vike-Freiberga was president of the Republic of Latvia from July 8, 1999, to July 8, 2007, the first female president of Latvia. Vike-Freiberga was born December 1, 1937, in Riga, Latvia. To escape the Soviet occupation, her family fled the country in 1945, and became refugees. She began her schooling in refugee camps in Germany and later in French Morocco. Vike-Freiberga arrived in Canada in 1954. She entered the University of Toronto in 1955, obtaining a B.A. (1958) and an M.A. (1960) in psychology. Vike-Freiberga continued her education […]