MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th July, 2019) The German nominee for the European Commission presidency, Ursula von der Leyen, is resigning as the country's defense minister.
Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen was born on October 8, 1958, in Ixelles, Belgium.
She graduated from the European School of Brussels in 1971.
In that same year, she started attending grammar school with a special focus on mathematics and science in the German city of Lehrte and studied there for five years.
In 1976, von der Leyen studied archaeology at the University of Gottingen in Germany; from 1977 to 1980 she studied economics at the University of Gottingen and the University of Munster; and in 1978 she attended classes at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
From 1980 to 1987, she studied medicine at Hanover Medical School, where she received her doctorate in medicine in 1991.
Von der Leyen completed her Master's degree in Public Health in 2001.
She worked as an assistant doctor in the gynecological department of the University Hospital Hannover from 1988 to 1992. She then moved to Stanford, the US state of California, where she lived until 1996.
In 1995, she worked at Stanford Health Services Hospital Administration doing market analysis.
From 1998 to 2002 she was a lecturer at the Department of Epidemiology, Social Medicine and Health System Research at Hanover Medical School.
Von der Leyen became a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1990.
Since 1999, she has been a member of the Physicians' Working Group of the CDU of Lower Saxony.
She held various posts in the Hanover region from 2001 to 2004: a member of the Hannover Regional Assembly, the chairman of the health committee, a member of the Sehnde city council, and others.
She was elected to the Parliament of Lower Saxony in 2003, and from March 2003 to November 2005, she served as the minister for social affairs, women, family affairs and health in Lower Saxony.
In 2005 she joined the Federal cabinet, and served as the federal minister for family affairs, senior citizens, women and youth from 2005 to 2009, and then, from 2009 to 2013, as the federal minister of labor and social affairs.
Von der Leyen became a member of the Bundestag, the German parliament in October 2009.
In November 2010, she started serving as deputy chairman of the CDU.�
On December 17, 2013, von der Leyen was appointed Germany's defense minister, becoming the first female to hold that post.
The European Council chose Ursula von der Leyen as a candidate for president of the European Commission on July 2, 2019. On Tuesday, EU lawmakers approved her as the new president of the European Commission. To be elected to the 747-seat European Parliament, she needed at least 374 votes and received 383. She will now be the first woman to take on the key EU role.
Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen is married and has seven children.�
