Dora Bakoyannis

Theodora "Dora" Bakoyanni (Θεοδώρα "Ντόρα" Μπακογιάννη, ; née Mitsotaki, Μητσοτάκη; born May 6, 1954) is a Greek politician.

Bakoyannis was born in Athens in 1954 to a prominent Greek family in the field of politics.

She is the eldest of four children of the veteran Greek politician Konstantinos Mitsotakis, former Prime Minister of Greece and former leader of country's main centre-right political party New Democracy, and Marika Mitsotakis (née Giannoukou).

Her family originates from Chania, Crete, and has a long tradition in the politics of Greece.

Besides her father and herself, other members of the family include prominent politicians such as her grandfather, Kyriakos, and his brother Aristomenis, while her younger brother Kyriakos, is the current Prime Minister of Greece.

She is also a great-granddaughter of Eleftherios Venizelos' sister.

This decade-long involvement has been reprehended as attestation for family-rule in Greek political life.

During her early school years, she attended the German School of Athens.

Her family was exiled to Paris by the Greek military junta in 1968, thus she completed her secondary schooling at the German School of Paris.

She then studied political science and communication at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich without graduating.

After the collapse of the junta, she returned to Greece and continued her academic studies in public law at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

In addition to Greek, Bakoyannis is fluent in English, French and German.

In the November 1989 election, Bakoyannis successfully contested her late husband's seat in the Evrytania constituency and was re-elected a member of the Hellenic Parliament in the 1990 election and served as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, following the election of her father as Prime Minister of Greece.

From September 1991 to August 1992, she served in the General Secretariat of International Affairs for New Democracy and represented the party at the European Democrat Union and the International Democrat Union.

She also served as Minister for Culture of Greece from 1992 to 1993.

Since December 1992, she served as Minister for Culture of Greece until the 1993 election, when she was re-elected a member of Parliament for New Democracy as the main opposition party.

On 29 April 1994, Bakoyannis was elected in the Central Committee of New Democracy by the party's Third Congress.

In the 1996 election Bakoyannis was a candidate for a first time in the Athens A' electoral district and was elected again as member of Parliament, coming first of all the candidates in it, something that was repeated in the 2000 election.

Meanwhile, on 22 March 1997, she was elected again to the Central Committee of New Democracy by the party's Fourth Congress.

She also served for two terms as the chairperson of the party's Executive Committee later.

In September 1997 she was appointed by New Democracy leader Kostas Karamanlis in the party's Department for Development and as Shadow Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defence in May 2000.

On 29 March 2002, Bakoyannis was picked to run for Mayor of Athens in the 2002 local elections, both a choice of Kostas Karamanlis who was looking for a way to demonstrate New Democracy's growing strength against the ruling Panhellenic Socialist Movement and a chance for Bakoyannis to earn prestige by this office in advance of the city hosting the Olympic games.

She was elected what was aired as Athens' first female mayor in the city's 3,500-year history, defeating her socialist opponent Christos Papoutsis and receiving a percentage of 60.6% in the runoff.

Previously she was the Mayor of Athens from 2003 to 2006, the first female mayor in the city's history, and the first woman to serve as mayor of a city hosting the Olympic Games.

In 2003, upon the invitation of Romano Prodi, then President of the European Commission, Bakoyannis joined a group of 12 high-level independent figures from Europe, as a member of a prestigious round-table conference, contributing proposals on the social character, cultural identity and economic future of new Europe.

As mayor, she was heavily involved in the preparation of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, the first woman to serve as mayor of a city hosting the Olympic Games, and passed the Olympic flag to the mayor of Beijing, Wang Qishan.

In 2005 she was awarded the World Mayor Prize.

From 2006 to 2009 she was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece, the highest position ever to have been held by a woman in the Cabinet of Greece at the time; she was also Chairperson-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 2009.

Bakoyannis left the office of Mayor before the end of her term, replaced by acting mayor Fotini Pipili, to become Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece on 15 February 2006 and thus the highest-ranking woman in the history of the Cabinet of Greece.

As Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bakoyannis assumed the rotating Greek presidency of the United Nations Security Council in September 2006, while at a time of international tensions over nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea and amidst a fragile United Nations brokered cease-fire in Lebanon.

During her incumbency, she promoted the cooperation in the Balkans, where Greek companies are heavily investing, traveled through the Middle East to help outline solutions to problems and attended meetings of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to discuss developments in the region.

She also promoted the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon by the Hellenic Parliament and supported Nicolas Sarkozy's plan about the Union for the Mediterranean, but did not reach a conciliation with Turkey and the Republic of Macedonia over the Cyprus dispute and the Macedonia naming dispute respectively.

She also retained the position after the 2007 election, managing to be elected as a member of the Hellenic Parliament first among all the candidates in the Athens A' constituency once more.

Bakoyannis served as the Chairperson-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe from January 2009 to 6 October 2009.

As the political leader of the OSCE, she was responsible for the external representation and the appointments of the Organization.

She also oversaw the activities of the OSCE in conflict prevention, crisis management and post-conflict rehabilitation.

During her chairmanship, she was assisted by her staff and Marc Perrin de Brichambaut, the Secretary General of the OSCE, as well as by her predecessor Alexander Stubb and successor Marat Tazhin, who both formed along with Bakoyannis the OSCE Troika.

Bakoyannis has been serving as an independent member of the Hellenic Parliament representing unofficially Democratic Alliance, the political party she founded in 2010, having been expelled from the opposition New Democracy party due to voting against the party line.

In May 2012, due to the critical situation in Greece before the elections and given the established electoral law, Democratic Alliance decided to cooperate with New Democracy, based on a specific framework of values and to suspend its activities.

Dora Bakoyannis rejoined New Democracy on 21 May 2012, ahead of the parliamentary election in June, where she headed the state deputies' ballot.