Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic
A Los Alamos High School graduate has been elected the first woman president of Croatia.
Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, 46, graduated from Los Alamos High School in 1986.
“This is a wonderful story of success by one of our alumni to realize this great achievement – it speaks to her character to take on this kind of challenge,” LAPS Superintendent Dr. Gene Schmidt said. “Mrs. Dorothy (Dee) Wilson was her counselor and describes her as very enthusiastic, a fun person who was not shy and who wanted to try all kinds of foods and everything kids in America get to do that they may not have been able to do in Croatia. Ms. Wilson went on to describe Kolinda as always willing to talk about her own culture and life in her country. Our community is very proud to have been a part of her upbringing and educational career and we all wish her much success as president of Croatia.”
1986 Los Alamos High School Yearbook photo of Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic. Courtesy/LAPS
Grabar-Kitarovic won the Croatian presidential election Sunday and will be sworn into office Feb. 15. The presidency carries a five-year term.
According to Wikipedia, Kolinda Grabar was born April 29, 1968, on Grobnik, a small village near Rijeka, Croatia. She lived in the United States for part of her childhood and graduated from Los Alamos High School in Los Alamos. She attended the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, graduating in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Spanish languages and literature.
From 1995 to 1996, she attended the Diploma Course at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. In 2000, she obtained a master’s degree in international relations from the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Zagreb. From 2002 to 2003, she attended George Washington University as a Fulbright scholar. She also received a Luksic Fellowship for the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and was a visiting scholar at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
