Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic (29 April 1968-) was the President of Croatia from 19 February 2015 to 18 February 2020, succeeding Ivo Josipovic and preceding Zoran Milanovic.
Biography[]
Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic was born on 29 April 1968 in Rijeka, Croatia to a Roman Catholic family. She lived in the United States for part of her childhood and was educated at the Los Alamos High School in Los Alamos, New Mexico. She later returned to Croatia and graduated from the University of Zagreb, and in 1993 she became an advisor for the foreign ministry of Croatia. From 1997 to 2000 she worked as an ambassador to Canada, and from 2005 to 2008 she was Minister of Foreign Affairs, succeeding Miomir Zuzul and preceding Gordan Jandrokovic. In 2015 she was chosen as the Croatian Democratic Union candidate for president, and she won the elections, succeeding Ivo Josipovic. She identified as a "modern conservative" who was typically a moderate, but occasionally adopted populist or nationalist policies. She opposed same-sex marriage, but she supported same-sex couple adoption rights; she also criticized the hard process of adoption and the anti-abortion movement, and she supported the environmentalist movement. On 5 January 2020, she was defeated for re-election by Zoran Milanovic of the Social Democratic Party of Croatia with 47.3% of the vote to Milanovic's 52.66%.