Mari Kiviniemi

Mari Johanna Kiviniemi (born 27 September 1968) is a Finnish politician, who served as the 41st and second female Prime Minister of Finland from 2010 to 2011. Since 25 August 2014, she is Deputy Secretary-General of the OECD. Life and career Kiviniemi was born in Seinäjoki, Finland. She grew up in rural Southern Ostrobothnia, the daughter of a chicken farmer, and went to school in Jalasjärvi. As a teenager during high school, she spent a year as an exchange student in Germany. She enrolled in the University of Helsinki in 1988 to study economics. Kiviniemi is a career politician, and first ran as a candidate for Member of Parliament in 1991, garnering less than 5,000 votes, while serving as the Secretary-General of the Centre Party Student Union. The year after completing the work for her master's degree in Social Sciences, she ran again in the 1995 general elections, this time winning a seat from the Southern Ostrobothnia district with 9,350 votes.