Category: President/Prime Minister/Head of State / page 3

Sheikh Hasina
Sheikh Hasina


Sheikh Hasina first became Bangladesh's prime minister in June 1996, serving until 2001, and then again assumed office January 2009. Hasina was awarded UNESCO's Houphouet-Boigny Peace Prize in 1998 for her contribution to bringing peace through ending the 25 years of conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Hasina was born on September 28, 1947, in Tungipara, Bangladesh. In 1968, she married M. A. Wazed Miah. She graduated from the University of Dhaka in 1973. Scion of a political family, she was actively involved in student politics in her college days. […]
Hilda Heine
Hilda Heine


Hilda Heine was the first woman to be president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, serving from January 28, 2016, till January 12, 2020. Heine was born on April 6, 1951, in Majuro Atoll, Marshall Islands. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Oregon in 1970. She earned a master's degree in education from the University of Hawaii in 1975 and an educational doctorate from the University of Southern California in 2004. Heine received an honorary doctorate in philosophy from Fu Jen Catholic University in 2019. She […]
Tsai Ing-wen
Tsai Ing-wen


Tsai Ing-wen is the current president of the Republic of China (Taiwan), elected on Saturday, January 16, 2016. She is the first female president of Taiwan and the first of Hakka and Aboriginal descent. Tsai grew up Fenggang, in southern Taiwan and moved to Taipei as a teenager. She earned a Bachelor of Laws at National Taiwan University, a Master of Laws from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. Upon returning to Taiwan after graduation, she taught law at School of Law at Soochow University […]
Janet Jagan
Janet Jagan


Janet Jagan, Guyana's fourth executive president, achieved a number of firsts in her long history of involvement in her adopted country's politics. She was to become Guyana's first woman Deputy Speaker, its first woman to be elected to the Georgetown City Council, its first woman cabinet minister, the country's first woman prime minister, and the nation's first woman president. Born in Chicago, Illinois on October 20, 1920, she was educated at the University of Detroit, Wayne University, Michigan State College and Cook County School of Nursing. She married Cheddi Jagan […]
Atifete Jahjaga
Atifete Jahjaga


Atifete Jahjaga served as the president of Kosovo from 2011 to 2016. She was the first female president of the Republic of Kosovo, the first non-partisan candidate, and the youngest female head of state to be elected to the top office. Jahjaga, a Kosovo Albanian, was born April 20, 1975, in Đakovica (now called Gjakova), then a part of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. She graduated from the University of Prishtina at the Faculty of Law in 2000. In 2007, she completed a graduate certificate program in police management and […]
Katrín Jakobsdóttir
Katrín Jakobsdóttir


Katrín Jakobsdóttir assumed office as the prime minister of Iceland on Nov. 30, 2017. Jakobsdóttir was born February 1, 1976, in Reykjavík, Iceland. She earned a bachelor's degree in Icelandic and with minor in French in 1999 and a Master of Arts in Icelandic literature in 2004, both from the University of Iceland. She worked as a language advisor at the news agency at public broadcaster RÚV from 1999 to 2003, a freelancer for broadcast and print media from 2004 to 2006, and a lecturer at the University of Iceland, […]
Kersti Kaljulaid
Kersti Kaljulaid


Kersti Kaljulaid served as the president of Estonia from 2016-2021. She was the first female, and youngest, head of state in Estonia since the country declared independence in 1918. Kaljulaid graduated from the University of Tartu in 1992 with a degree in genetics. She completed her master’s studies in economics and business administration in 2001. From 1996 to 1999, Kaljulaid worked in several corporate positions in Estonia. From 1999 to 2002, she was the economic advisor of Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar, and from 2002 to 2004, she was the […]
Begum Khaleda Zia
Begum Khaleda Zia


Begum Khaleda Zia served as Prime Minister of Bangladesh from 1991 to 1996 and again from 2001 to 2006. She was the first woman in Bangladesh's history and second in the Muslim world (after Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan) to head a democratic government as prime minister. Khaleda Zia was born in the Dinajpur district in northwestern Bangladesh in 1945. In 1960, she married Ziaur Rahman. Her husband, one of the prominent heroes of the country's liberation war, later became President of the Republic and formed the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) […]
Mari Kiviniemi
Mari Kiviniemi


Mari Johanna Kiviniemi, deputy secretary-general of the OECD since August 2014, served as prime minister of Finland from 2010 - 2011, Finland's second female prime minister. Kiviniemi was born September 27, 1968 in Seinäjoki, Finland. She graduated from the University of Helsinki with a degree in economics. She first ran as a candidate for member of parliament in 1991, garnering less than 5,000 votes, while serving as the secretary general of the Centre Party Student Union. The year after completing the work for her master's degree in social sciences, she […]
Jadranka Kosor
Jadranka Kosor


Jadranka Kosor was elected as Croatia's first woman prime minister since independence on July 6, 2009, after Ivo Sanader's sudden resignation from the post, and served until December 23, 2011. Kosor also replaced Sanader as the head of the ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), serving from July 4, 2009 to May 21, 2012. Born on July 1, 1953, in Pakrac, Croatia, Kosor completed her secondary education in the town of Lipik. She graduated with a law degree from the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, where she became a print and […]