Katrín Jakobsdóttir

Katrín Jakobsdóttir served as the prime minister of Iceland (2017–2024) and led a three party government. She was a member of the Icelandic parliament from 2007 to 2024. She served as Iceland's minister of education, science, and culture, and of Nordic cooperation from 2009 to 2013. She served as the chair of the Left-Green Movement from 2013 to 2024 and as a vice-chair of that party from 2003. She ran for president of Iceland in 2024 and came in second with 25,1% of the popular vote. Prime Minister Jakobsdóttir‘s coalition government continued Iceland’s groundbreaking approach to addressing systemic gender inequality and was at the forefront of climate change policy and committed to make Iceland carbon-neutral before 2040. Katrín Jakobsdóttir has as a politician emphasized the importance the approach of Well-being government and spearheaded a framework of 39 indicators that cover social, economic and environmental dimensions of quality of life. During her time in office, she led the work on Iceland´s first policy on artificial intelligence that was published in 2021 and her government established a plan to make the largest language models well-usable in the Icelandic language. Before entering politics she studied Icelandic literature, worked as literary critic, teacher and in a publishing house. She co-wrote a crime novel called Reykjavík with best-selling author Ragnar Jónasson that was published in 2022 and has been published in fifteen languages. They published a sequel called Franski spítalinn in 2025. She now works as Senior emissary and chair of the Polar Dialogue at the Arctic Circle, serves as the Chair of the Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health, lectures on various topics and works as an independent consultant. She is also chair of the Reykjavík Arts Festival, chair of the Center of Equal Opportunites at the Business faculty at the University of Iceland and a member on the board of University of Iceland. She lives in Reykjavík, is married to Gunnar Sigvaldason and they have three sons.