BELGRADE, June 30 (Xinhua) -- Ana Brnabic, first woman and LGBT person to become part of Serbian government, has been elected on Thursday at the parliament as the new Prime Minister of the country by 157 votes out of 250 MPs.
Brnabic was born in Belgrade, Serbia in 1975 and obtained a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the Northwood University of Michigan, the United States in 1998, and master's degree in marketing from Hull University, in Britain in 2001.
While studying in Britain during March 1999 she got a post at the Serbian Information Centre which coordinated exchange between British media and civil organizations and pro-reform oriented political parties in Serbia, and worked there until October 2002.
Upon returning to Serbia in 2002 she coordinated cooperation between local and international stakeholders such as international organizations, foreign investors, local self-governments and public sectors in Serbia, and her employers were mostly US consultancy firms which executed programs financed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Serbia.
She worked briefly as an advisor to presidential candidate Miroljub Labus during campaign of 2002, and also advised the director of the Coordination body for Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac of the Serbian government from 2007 to 2010 about cooperation with United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other international organizations and foreign governments, including European Union delegation, German and British embassies and others.
During this time she also worked on USAID's programs in Serbia such as the Serbia Local Government Reform Program (SLGRP) from 2002 to 2005, Municipal Economic Growth Activity (MEGA) from 2005 to 2007 and Serbia Competitiveness Project from 2007 to 2011, where she was engaged to coordinate the implementation of these programs with Serbian local and state government, as well as the media.
In 2010 she became an executive director and member of the managing board of the newly-established PEXIM Foundation, a private, non-profit organization with headquarters in Belgrade, Serbia, and Skopje, Macedonia, as a vehicle to support talented students from both countries to continue their studies at the University of Cambridge.
According to her official biography published by the website of the government, in 2011 she started working for US company Continental Wind Serbia which develops wind farms, and was its director from 2013 to October 2015.
She entered the spotlight of the Serbian public in August 2016 when then Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic admitted that he was aware of Brnabic's LGBT sexual orientation when he nominated her for the minister of public administration and local self-government, and said: "What is important to me is what she can achieve, and I have no doubt in her abilities".
A month later, in September 2016 she participated in the Pride Parade held in Belgrade where she came together with Belgrade mayor Sinisa Mali to support representatives of LGBT population.
Besides being a minister, Brnabic also presided and presides over the Council for innovation-based entrepreneurship and information technologies as well as the Council for national minorities of the Serbian government.
After Vucic resigned this May to become president, he officially made Brnabic PM-designate with a presidential decree on June 15, less than a year after he first appointed her as minister in his government.
Brnabic does not have a family of her own, and lives in the apartment in Dedinje, Belgrade. Her parents are Zoran (deceased) and Ruzica Brnabic. Her brother Igor is a director of a prominent IT company that sells computer components and software.
