Ursula von der Leyen was born in Brussels in 1958, trained as a physician and economist and served in successive German federal cabinets as minister for family affairs, labour and defence before being elected president of the European Commission in 2019 — the first woman to hold the role. She was re-elected for a second term in 2024.
Her tenure has spanned the EU's pandemic response and the unprecedented common debt issuance behind NextGenerationEU, the European Green Deal as the bloc's central industrial framework, the coordinated response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and a sustained push on the European Chips Act, Critical Raw Materials Act and AI Act.
She has become the European Union's principal external face on industrial competitiveness, security cooperation with the United States, and the bloc's relationship with both China and the global south.