Biography

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Dalia Grybauskaitė served as the first female President of Lithuania from 2009 to 2019; she was the only President of Lithuania to be elected to a second term. Grybauskaitė served as the Chair of the Council from 2014 to 2019. 

Dalia Grybauskaitė was born in Vilnius on 1 March 1956. She studied at Vilnius Salomėja Nėris Secondary School. In 1983, she graduated with a bachelor in political economy from the then Leningrad University. In 1988, she defended her thesis at Moscow Academy of Public Sciences and received a doctoral degree in economics. In 1993, the Research Council of Lithuania granted her an academic degree of doctor of social sciences. In 1992, she completed a special six-month program for senior executives at Georgetown University in Washington. 

She was Head of the Agriculture Division at Vilnius High Party School in 1983-1984, and later, from 1985 to 1990 - a lecturer at the Department of Political Economy. In August 1990-1991, she was a scientific secretary at the Lithuanian Institute of Economics under the Ministry of Economics of the Republic of Lithuania.

Dalia Grybauskaitė became a program director in the Prime Minister's office in 1991. The same year, she was 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. In the following year she was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at the Lithuanian Mission to the EU. From 1996-1999, Dalia Grybauskaitė acted as Minister Plenipotentiary at the Lithuanian Embassy in the US. She then served as Vice Finance Minister (1999-2000), Vice Foreign Minister from (2000-2001), and Finance Minister (2001-2004). In 2004, Dalia Grybauskaitė was appointed EU Commissioner Responsible for Financial Programming and Budget. In November 2005, she was elected Commissioner of the Year for her efforts to reform the EU budget.

In March 2020, Grybauskaitė was appointed by the President of the United Nations General Assembly and the President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council as one of the two co-chairs of the High Level Panel on International Financial Accountability Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda (FACTI Panel).

Grybauskaitė speaks four foreign languages: English, Russian, Polish, and basic French.