Lithuanian President Visits Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar

President of the Republic of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaitė, visited Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar this week. In 1991, she completed a special course for senior executives at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She noted during the visit that the program was beneficial for her career as a leading diplomat. In 1991, she became program director in the Prime Minister’s Office of Lithuania, and then served as Director of Economic Relations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1993. In 2004, she was appointed EU Commissioner and was responsible for financial programming and the budget. In 2009, she was elected President of the Republic of Lithuania.

Full Biography:

Dalia Grybauskaitė was born in Vilnius on the 1st of March, 1956. After graduating from school, she studied political economy at Leningrad University. In 1988, she defended her Ph.D. thesis at the Moscow Academy of Public Sciences. She holds the academic qualification of Doctor of Social Sciences.

In 1991, she completed a special course for senior executives at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She then became a program director in the Prime Minister’s office of Lithuania. That same year, she was appointed Director of the European Department at the Ministry of International Economic Relations of Lithuania. In 1993, she served as Director of the Economic Relations Department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania. A year later she was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at the Lithuanian Mission to the EU. From 1996 to 1999, Dalia Grybauskaitė acted as Minister Plenipotentiary at the Lithuanian Embassy in the USA. She served in the government of Lithuania as deputy finance minister from 1999 to 2000, deputy foreign minister from 2000 to 2001, and finance minister from 2001 to 2004.

In 2004, Dalia Grybauskaitė was appointed EU commissioner responsible for financial programming and the budget. She was elected Commissioner of the Year in November of 2005 “for her unrelenting efforts to shift EU spending towards areas that would enhance competitiveness, such as research and development.”As EU Commissioner, she launched one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the European Union: she initiated the reform of the European Community’s budget to ensure a more expedient, efficient and transparent use of funds. On the 26th of February, 2009, Dalia Grybauskaitė announced that she would run for Lithuania’s presidential office. In the first round of voting on May 17, 2009 she was elected President of the Republic of Lithuania in a landslide victory.

The President has the following state decorations of Lithuania: the Order of Vytautas the Great with the Golden Chain (2009) and the Cross of Commander of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas (2003). She is the recipient of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav and Latvia’s Order of Three Stars, First Class and the Chain.