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Profile: Croatian first female president Kitarovic

Xinhua, January 13, 2015 Adjust font size:

Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, a politician and diplomat, became the first female president in Croatian history after defeating incumbent president Ivo Josipovic in a run-off on Sunday.

The President-elect, 46, who had served as a foreign minister, ambassador to the United States and NATO assistant secretary general for public diplomacy, was born in the coastal town of Rijeka. Her grandfather Victor was one of the founders of Croatian Peasant Party (HSS).

Kitarovic spent her childhood in the small village of Lubarska in the hinterland of Rijeka where her father has a butcher shop and a ranch with 22 cows.

As a child she was helping her parents milking cows and taking care of cattle. With the experience she likes to joke that she is one of the few career diplomats who can milk a cow.

At school, she was hardworking and ambitious. In high school she joined a students exchange program studying in the United States. Graduated in English and Spanish at Zagreb University, she also speaks Portuguese, knows German, Italian and French.

She obtained a master degree in political science and in the late 1990s, she studies international relations and security policy in the United States with a Fulbright scholarship. In Zagreb University, she met her husband Jakov Kitarovic, who graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing. They married in 1996 and have a daughter and a son.

In the 1990s, Kitarovic entered the ministry of foreign affairs and started her career. At the same time she joined the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), which named her to the presidential candidacy.

In 2003, she became minister of European integration and she took the post of minister of foreign affairs in 2005 when the two ministries connected.

She continued her career as Ambassador to the United States in 2008. She became assistant NATO Secretary General for Public Diplomacy in 2011.

Kitarovic will assume her new position on Feb. 19. During her campaign, Kitarovic promised that Croatia will be among the most prosperous countries in the European Union and the world.

"There is no place for triumphalism, we have to work tonight," she said, calling citizens to unite, take out Croatia from economic crisis and take it in welfare. Endit