Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic

Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović ; born 18 June 1968) is a Croatian politician and diplomat serving as the 4th and current President of Croatia  since 2015. She is the first woman to be elected to the office after the first multi-party elections in 1990. At 46 years of age, she also became the youngest person to assume the presidency.

Before her election as President of Croatia, Grabar-Kitarović held a number of governmental and diplomatic positions. She was Minister of European Affairs from 2003 to 2005, the first female Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration  from 2005 to 2008 in both the first and second cabinets of Ivo Sanader, Croatian Ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2011 and Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy at NATO under Secretaries General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Jens Stoltenberg from 2011 to 2014.

Grabar-Kitarović contested the presidential election held in December 2014 and January 2015 as the only female candidate (out of four in total), finishing as the runner-up in the first round and thereafter proceeding to narrowly defeat incumbent President Ivo Josipović in the second round. Her strong performance in the first round was widely viewed as unexpected, as most opinion polls had given incumbent president Josipović a strong lead and some even showed it was possible that he would win outright by acquiring more than 50% of the vote. In the second round, Grabar-Kitarović defeated Josipović by the closest percentage margin of any