Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was born 29 October 1938. She is the 24th and current President of Liberia. She served as Minister of Finance under President William Tolbert from 1979 until the 1980 coup d’état, after which she left Liberia and held senior positions at various financial institutions.

She placed a very distant second in the 1997 presidential election. Later, she was elected President in the 2005 presidential election and took office on January 16, 2006.

Sirleaf is the first and currently only elected female Head of State in Africa. While not Americo-Liberian by ancestry, Sirleaf is considered culturally Americo-Liberian by some observers or assumed to be Americo-Liberian. However, Sirleaf does not identify as such.

Her ethnic background is 1/2 Gola from her father’s side, and 1/4 German (grandfather) and 1/4 Kru (grandmother) from her mother’s side.

Sirleaf was born in Monrovia, and studied economics and accounts from 1948 to 1955 at the College of West Africa in Monrovia. She married James Sirleaf when she was 17 years old, and then travelled with him to the United States in 1961 to continue her studies and earned an accounting degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a degree in economics from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Sirleaf later studied economics and public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government from 1969 to 1971, gaining a Masters of Public Administration. She then returned to her native Liberia to work under the government of William Tolbert.

Sirleaf is a mother of four sons and has eight grandchildren. Her great nephew, Emmanuel Sumana Elsar Sr., was her political advisor during the 2005 presidential elections against George Weah.

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