Kamla Persad-Bissessar

Her ancestors emigrated in the 1880s from India to Trinidad through the Indian indenture system.

Her maternal great-grandparents (her maternal grandmother's parents) were Sumaria and Seepersad who were from India.

Sumaria was from present-day Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India and had left India from the Madras Port.

Her paternal great-grandparents (her paternal grandfather's parents) were Pundit Ram Lakhan Mishra and Ganga Mishra who were from India.

Pundit Ram Lakhan Mishra was from Bhelupur, Bihar, India.

After indentureship, Pundit Ram Lakhan and Ganga Mishra had settled at Boodoo Trace in the town of Penal in southern Trinidad.

Kamla Persad-Bissessar (born Kamla Susheila Persad, 22 April 1952), often referred to by her initials KPB, is a Trinidadian and Tobagonian lawyer, politician and educator who is the Leader of the Opposition of Trinidad and Tobago, political leader of the United National Congress (UNC) political party, and was the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago from 26 May 2010 until 9 September 2015.

She was the country's first female prime minister, attorney general, and Leader of the Opposition, the first woman to chair the Commonwealth of Nations and the first woman of Indian origin to be a prime minister of a country outside of India and the wider subcontinent.

In 1959, at the age of seven, her family moved to Siparia where she attended the Erin Road Presbyterian Primary School, and later the Siparia Union Presbyterian Primary School.

In 1963, she was accepted to Iere High School in Siparia, a new co-ed school at the time.

There she was a top debating student, champion badminton and netball player, and she excelled in her classes and was put into special classes to write the GCE O Levels in 1966.

She graduated in 1969.

When Persad-Bissessar was sixteen, she wanted to go to the United Kingdom to further her studies, but her traditional father and uncles insisted she stayed in Trinidad and Tobago.

However, her mother eventually convinced them to send her.

Persad-Bissessar then left Trinidad at the age of seventeen, in August 1969, to attended Norwood Technical College in West Norwood, London, England.

While in college in England, she worked as a social worker with the Church of England's Children's Society of London.

By the time she left Trinidad she had already met her future husband Gregory Bisessar and he was already in England when she was attending college.

They married two years later in 1971, when she was eighteen and he was twenty-two.

They later left England for Jamaica, where they spent fourteen years.

In Jamaica she attended the University of the West Indies in Mona and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) in 1974 and a post-graduate Diploma of Education in 1976.

After graduating, she taught at St Andrew High School in Kingston and at the University of the West Indies in Mona, and she was also a consultant lecturer at the Jamaica College of Insurance.

She was the youngest lecturer, at the age of twenty-five, to the ever teach at the University of the West Indies.

She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to attend Columbia University to do research leading to a PhD but she opted to study law instead.

In 1985, she graduated from the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill with her Bachelor of Laws (Hons.).

Persad-Bissessar became political leader of the UNC in 2010.

Persad-Bissessar held the premiership from May 2010 to September 2015, where she was also the leader of the People's Partnership - a political coalition of centre and center-left wing parties that governed the country.

In 2011, Persad-Bissessar was named the thirteenth most influential female leader around the world by Time magazine.

In 2012, Persad-Bissessar visited her paternal great-grandfather's village on a state visit to India.

Persad-Bissessar spent her early childhood living in a joint family with her parents and paternal grandparents at Boodoo Trace in Penal, where she attended the Mohess Road Hindu School.

Since September 2015, she has been the Leader of the Opposition of Trinidad and Tobago.

After the coalition disbanded in September 2015, following their electoral defeat, Persad-Bissessar attempted to regain power in the August 2020 elections; however, the UNC only managed to increase their seat count by 2 and the popular vote by 20,000.

Nonetheless, the PNM under the leadership of Keith Rowley (who later became Trinidad and Tobago's seventh Prime Minister) maintained power and was re-elected, however, with a smaller majority.

Kamla Susheila Persad was born in Siparia in southern Trinidad to Lilraj and Rita Persad, both Hindus of Indian descent.

Her father was a bookkeeper and worked in the accounting department of Texaco, while her mother was a maid and labourer in the cocoa fields, who eventually saved up to own and operate a roti shop.

Her paternal grandparents were Soomintra Persad (née Gopaulsingh) and Choranji Persad, and her maternal grandparents were Rookmin and Ramprit.

Her paternal grandmother, Soomintra, was a market seller who was a founding member of the Saraswati Prakash Mandir, a Hindu temple at Boodoo Trace in Penal, and she had organized a ladies Indian singing and Hindu prayer group, as well as being an elder counsellor who helped those in need.

Her maternal grandmother, Rookmin, and her maternal great-grandmother, Sumaria, were both laborers in the sugarcane and cocoa fields and both had to become the breadwinners to support their families after their husbands died at young ages.

Persad-Bissessar has said that she credits her mother, grandmothers, and great-grandmother as setting examples for her in feminism and paving the way for her.

Persad-Bissessar had one brother and three sisters, her brother, Roland, and eldest sister, Shirley, are deceased and her other two sisters are Vidwatie Newton who lived in England and Sally Ahamad who lives in New York.

She was born into a Brahmin Hindu Indian family.