Biography

President Dalia Grybauskaitė was born on 1 March 1956 in Vilnius.

She studied at Salomėja Nėris Secondary School. At the age of nineteen she started working as a staff inspector at the State Philharmonic in Vilnius.

A year later Dalia Grybauskaitė went to study to the University in Leningrad, where she studied political economy in the part-time division. At the same time she worked in a fur factory.

After completing her studies as economist and lecturer of political economy, she returned to Vilnius and for a few months worked as a secretary in charge in the society "Žinija" under the then Academy of Sciences. She was Head of the Agriculture Division at Vilnius High Party School in 1983-1984, and later, in 1985-1990, a lecturer at the Department of Political Economy on the political economy and the world history of money. In 1988, she passed equivalency examination and defended a scientific thesis at the Moscow Academy of Public Sciences. In 1993, the Council of the Academy of Sciences of Lithuania acknowledged this scientific degree, granting her an academic degree of the doctor of social sciences.

In 1991, Dalia Grybauskaitė completed a special programme for senior executives at the Georgetown University in Washington.

In 1991, she became a Programme Director in the Prime Minister's Office of the Republic of Lithuania. In the same year, she was Director of the European Department at the Ministry of International Economic Relations.

In 1993, she became Director of the Economic Relations Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A year later she was appointed the Extraordinary Envoy and Plenipotentiary Minister at the Lithuanian Mission to the EU.

From 1996, she acted as the Plenipotentiary Minister at the Lithuanian Embassy in the USA.

She returned to Lithuania in 1999 and in the same year started working as Deputy Minister of Finance in the Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius' Office.

In 2000, she was appointed as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania.

In 2001, she became Minister of Finance of the Republic of Lithuania in the Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas' Office.

As of 1 May 2004 under a resolution passed by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, she was delegated to work in the European Commission. Dalia Grybauskaitė was entrusted with one of the most important areas: she was appointed EU Commissioner in charge of financial programming and budget of the European Union. After spending one-year in the European Commission, she was elected "Commissioner of the Year 2005". She was nominated for this title "for her unrelenting efforts to shift EU spending towards areas that would enhance competitiveness such as research and development."

In 2003, she was awarded the Cross of Commander of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas.

While serving as the EU Commissioner, she started implementing one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the European Union: she initiated the reform of the Community's budget. The objective of this reform was to ensure a more expedient, efficient and transparent use of funds.

On 26 February 2009 she announced that she would run for Lithuania's presidential office. Having received tremendous support from the Lithuanian people, on May 17, in the first election round, Dalia Grybauskaitė was elected President of the Republic of Lithuania.

The President speaks four foreign languages: English, Russian, Polish, and French.

The President is fond of classical music, she likes to spend her leisure time reading and going in for sports.