Category: President/Prime Minister/Head of State / page 6

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 […]
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 […]
Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf
Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf


Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf served as president of Switzerland from January 1 to December 31, 2012, and served as head of Switzerland's Department of Finance from November 2010 to December 2015. Widmer-Schlumpf was born on March 16, 1956, and grew up in Felsberg. After legal studies in Zurich in 1981, she returned to her native Canton of Graubünden where she was admitted to the bar, practicing as a lawyer and notary public. She obtained a doctorate from the University of Zurich in 1990. She worked as a self-employed lawyer and notary public […]
Sahle-Work Zewde
Sahle-Work Zewde


Sahle-Work Zewde assumed office as president of Ethiopia on October 25, 2018, the first woman to hold that office. Zewde was born on February 21, 1950, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopian Empire (now Ethiopia). She graduated from the University of Montpellier with a degree in natural sciences. Prior to her election as president, Zewde served at under secretary-general of the United Nations to the African Union in 2018 and director-general of the United Nations Office at Nairobi from 2011 to 2018. From 1989 to 2008, she served as the Ethiopian ambassador […]
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) […]