Jens Stoltenberg

Jens's father, Thorvald Stoltenberg (1931–2018), was a prominent Labour party politician and diplomat who served as an ambassador, as defence minister and as foreign minister.

His mother, Karin Stoltenberg (née Heiberg; 1931–2012), was a geneticist who served as state secretary in multiple governments during the 1980s.

Marianne Heiberg, married to former foreign minister Johan Jørgen Holst, was his maternal aunt.

Jens Stoltenberg (born 16 March 1959) is a Norwegian politician who has served as the 13th secretary general of NATO since 2014.

Stoltenberg was born 16 March 1959 in Oslo, into the Norwegian Stoltenberg family, the family name derived from Stoltenberg in Schleswig-Holstein where a German ancestor once lived.

Jens lived in SFR Yugoslavia from 1961 to 1964 while his father worked at the Norwegian embassy.

Stoltenberg attended primary school at Oslo Waldorf School, and upper secondary school at Oslo Cathedral School.

He served his mandatory military service with the Army's Infantry Training Centre at Evjemoen in Aust-Agder.

From 1979 to 1981, Stoltenberg was a journalist for Arbeiderbladet.

During his studies, he worked as a journalist, and led Labour's youth wing from 1985 to 1989.

From 1985 to 1989, he was the leader of the Workers' Youth League.

Born in Oslo as the son of the prominent diplomat and politician Thorvald Stoltenberg and Karin Stoltenberg, Stoltenberg attended Oslo Waldorf School and Oslo Cathedral School before graduating with a degree in economics from the University of Oslo in 1987.

After leaving the army, Stoltenberg enrolled at the University of Oslo, graduating in 1987 with the cand.oecon. degree in economics.

The title of his thesis was ''Makroøkonomisk planlegging under usikkerhet.

En empirisk analyse'' ("Macroeconomic planning under uncertainty. An empirical analysis").

Stoltenberg's first steps into politics came in his early teens, when he was influenced by his sister Camilla, who at the time was a member of the then Marxist–Leninist group Red Youth.

Opposition to the Vietnam War was his triggering motivation.

Following heavy bombing raids against the North Vietnamese port city of Hai Phong at the end of the Vietnam War, he participated in protest rallies targeting the United States Embassy in Oslo.

On at least one occasion embassy windows were broken by stone-throwing protesters.

Several of Stoltenberg's friends were arrested by the police after these events.

From 1989 to 1990, he worked as an executive officer for Statistics Norway, Norway's central institution for producing official statistics.

He also worked part-time as an hourly paid instructor at the University of Oslo during this period.

He started his career in government as a state secretary in the Ministry of the Environment in 1990 and was elected to the Storting in 1993.

Between 1990 and 1992, he was leader of the Oslo chapter of the Labour Party.

Up to 1990, he had regular contacts with a Soviet diplomat.

He ended this relationship after being informed by the Norwegian Police Security Service that his contact was a KGB agent, warning him against further contact.

The code name given to Stoltenberg by the KGB was "Steklov".

Stoltenberg served as State Secretary in the Ministry of the Environment from 1990 to 1991.

He served as Minister of Industry and Energy from 1993 to 1996 and Minister of Finance from 1996 to 1997.

He was first elected to Parliament in 1993 for the Oslo constituency, and is a member of the Labour Party.

He served as Minister of Industry from 1993 to 1996, until Brundtland resigned.

In 1996, Thorbjørn Jagland became prime minister, and Stoltenberg became Minister of Finance.

On 29 September 1997, Jagland resigned because of an ultimatum he had issued stating that the cabinet would resign if the party received less than 36.9% of the popular vote.

A member of the Norwegian Labour Party, he previously served as the 34th prime minister of Norway from 2000 to 2001 and again from 2005 until 2013.

He was prime minister from 2000 to 2001, was leader of the Labour Party from 2002 to 2014, and served as prime minister for a second time from 2005 to 2013.

When he became prime minister in 2000, he was portrayed as the "Norwegian Tony Blair", and his policies were inspired by Blair's New Labour agenda; his first government oversaw the most widespread privatisation by any Norwegian government to that date.

Stoltenberg said he was both inspired by and wanted to learn from Blair's policies.

As the second longest serving high-ranking official in NATO history, Stoltenberg has worked to expand the alliance into Eastern Europe, strengthen the alliance's military capabilities in response to the Russo-Ukrainian War, and his tenure coincided with the largest increase in NATO defense spending since the Cold War.

The following year, he was named as the 13th secretary general of NATO, and his term was subsequently extended four times by the NATO heads of state and government.

Stoltenberg has been described as a cautious politician, belonging to the right-wing of social democracy.