Meglena Kouneva – European Commissioner for Consumer Protection
Born in 1957 in Sofia, Meglena Kouneva is a law school graduate and worked as a journalist for the law programme on Bulgarian National Radio while simultaneously being an assistant professor at Sofia University. In 1990, she took a job as a senior legal adviser at the Cabinet, which she held until June 2001, when she was elected a member of Parliament in the 39th National Assembly. In August 2001, Kouneva left Parliament because she has been appointed as a deputy minister and Bulgaria’s chief negotiator with the European Union at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In December 2006, Kouneva was elected by the European Parliament as the European Commissioner in charge of Consumer Protection. She commenced her term of office on January 1 2007 when Bulgaria became an EU member country.

Emel Etem – Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Disaster Management
Emel Etem was born in 1958 in Isperih. In the 1980s  she earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering, working as a construction engineer from 1981 to 1992. Becoming an MP in the 38th National Assembly, she continued in this post for a second term. She became a deputy prime minister in 2005. Etem is a member of the political party representing Bulgarians of Turkish descent – the Movement for Rights and Freedoms. Etem is of Turkish descent; first name in Turkish means “desire”.

Maya Georgieva – executive director of First Investment Bank
Born in Sofia, Georgieva is a graduate from the University of National and World Economy and Sofia’s Technical University with degrees in French philology and banking, respectively.  She worked for Bulgarian National Bank and later for First Investment Bank. She won the Banker of the Year award in 2001, granted by Bulgarian weekly newspaper Banker.

Stefka Kostadinova – head of the Bulgarian Olympic Committee
Born on March 25 1965 in Plovdiv, Stefka Kostadinova is a former high jump champion, having won the gold medal in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, where she set an Olympic record of 2.05 metres. She earned recognition as a double world outdoor champion during the world championships in 1987 and 1995. Kostadinova has taken part in five IAAF World Indoor Championships in athletics, winning gold in all of them. She also won gold in all the European championships in athletics in which she has competed. And the list of awards continues.

Perhaps most interestingly, Kostadinova is still the reigning world record holder in the women’s high jump with 2.09m, which she jumped at the 1987 Rome World Championship in Athletics. Her world record is one of the longest standing in modern athletics.

Altogether, she has set seven world records and has jumped higher than 2.00m more than 100 times. Kostadinova has been elected four times as Sportsperson of the Year and was included in the top 10 female athletes of the 20th century, according to the International Association of Athletics Federations.

After retiring as a athlete, Kostadinova started a career in sports administration. Since 1999 she has held positions as a vice president of the Bulgarian Athletic Federation and was deputy sports minister of Bulgaria during 2003-2005. In November 2005, she was elected president of the Bulgarian Olympic Committee, replacing Ivan Slavkov, who was expelled by the International Olympic Committee for violating its ethics standards.

Maria Stefanova – head of the Council of Electronic Media (CEM)
Maria Stefanova was born in 1964 in Sofia. She is a graduate in journalism from Sofia University. She has worked as a reporter and presenter at Bulgarian National Radio, Bulgarian National Television, and radio Express. Stefanova has also been Editor-in-Chief at radio Kanal Kom, news editor at Channel 3, and a member of the Bulgarian National Radio management board. On November 23 2001, she was elected to CEM from the National Assembly quota. In March 2006, she became acting executive secretary of CEM.

Stefanova was elected as head of CEM on March 1 2007, three months after the death of then CEM chairman Raicho Raikov.

Licensing and the forthcoming elections of the Bulgarian National Television and the Bulgarian National Radio general directors of are among the priorities in the plan that the new head will propose to her CEM colleagues.

Anelia Kroushkova – head of State Agency for Tourism
Kroushkova is a graduate of Sofia’s University of National and World Economy, from which she earned a master’s degree in economics and transport management. On February 1 2007, Kroushkova was appointed by the Government as head of the State Agency for Tourism. Her job comes from the quota of State Administration Minister Nikolai Vassilev’s party the National Movement Simeon II. Kroushkova was Vassilev’s deputy during his term as transport minister in Simeon Saxe-Coburg’s cabinet in 2003-2005.

Before taking the post as a deputy transport minister, Kroushkova was a managing director of a large freight forwarding company.

She is co-founder of the Bulgarian-Italian Chamber of Commerce and of the Club of Women Entrepreneurs and Managers in Bulgaria, as well as holding membership in the Bulgarian-Swiss Association for Trade and Economic Co-operation.

Silva Zourleva – chairwoman of the Council of Directors of Nova Televisia
Silva Zourleva was born in 1958 in Kyustendil. She studied Bulgarian philology and modern Greek language and literature at Sofia University. Upon her gradation, she was a fiction literature translator and reviewed books by Balkan authors. Zourleva worked as an editor at Bulgarian National Television and Sofia Press, and was a correspondent for Greek newspapers and magazines. In 1992 Zourleva worked as a business consultant. Among the projects in which she had a hand are with the companies Delta, Nikas, Goody’s, Coca-Cola and Plevenski Tsiment. The advertising slogan “Delta – vruh na sladoleda” (“Delta – the peak of ice-cream”), which is widely recognised in Bulgaria, was her creation. In 1999 Zourleva headed the media group Antenna in Bulgaria. After Antenna purchased Nova Televisia and radio Express, Zourleva became chairwoman of the council of directors of the two media.

Elena Poptodorova – Bulgarian ambassador to the US
Poptodorova is a graduate in English language and literature from Sofia University. Later she did a two-year post-graduate course in international relations and diplomacy at the University of National and World Economy in Sofia. She also followed shorter educational courses at the University of Leeds (UK) and the University of Siena (Italy). Among the numerous positions she has held are deputy chairwoman of the Inter-European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development (IEPFPD, Brussels), deputy chairwoman of the National Commission for UNESCO of the Republic of Bulgaria, vice-chairwoman of the Committee on Equal Opportunities of Women and Men, and spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Poptodorova has been Bulgaria’s ambassador to the US since 2002.

Ulyana Prumova – Bulgarian National Television director-general
Ulyana Prumova has 20 years of work experience at Bulgarian National Television (BNT). She was a presenter of the news programme Dnes, which was broadcast on the now-defunct Channel 2. She also presented 24 Chassa on Channel 1, was an editor at Channel 1’s news programme Po sveta i u nas, and was director of the news team at BNT. She worked as a correspondent for BNT and Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) in Geneva and Vienna. For three years, Prumova headed the internal affairs department at Kontinent newspaper. Previous media positions include managing director of cable TV station BBT, and Editor-in-Chief of the news programme Novinite broadcast on the cable TV channel Den. Prumova is a graduate of the French lycee in Sofia, and a Sofia University graduate in Italian philology.

Diana Mladenova – Investbank executive director
Mladenova holds a law degree from Sofia University.  She worked as a regional prosecutor at Sofia District Prosecutor’s Office. She was also a chief law consultant to Bulgarian-Russian Investment Bank. In 1998, Mladenova became chairwoman of the management board and an executive director at DZI Bank. In 2002 she became deputy chairwoman of the council of directors of DZI.

On October 26 2006, the deputy governor in charge of the banking supervision department issued a banking qualification and professional experience certificate to Mladenova as a member of the managing board and executive director of Investbank.

Sasha Bezouhanova – CEO of Hewlett-Packard Bulgaria
Bezouhanova studied at the German school in Sofia. She graduated from the Technical University in Sofia with a degree in electronic technology. From the beginning of the 1980s, she worked for an Austrian company that dealt in medical equipment. She was later promoted to regional representative. Since 1994, Bezouhanova has been working for Hewlett-Packard, becoming, in 1998, the general director. Through the years, she has received awards for businesswoman in the IT sphere, IT manager of the year (2001 and 2002), and business woman of the 1990s.

Polina Stancheva – CEO of Bulgarian National Radio
In 1982, Stancheva graduated from university with a degree in linguistics with a focus in English, Russian and Swedish. Her history with BNR dates to 1983, when she started as an assistant at the station’s youth  programming department. In 1991, she completed a PhD in the field of the electronic media and studied public administration in the Netherlands. From 1993-1997 Stancheva worked as a journalist at Bulgarian National Television until 2000, when she became programme director at BNR. In 2001, Stancheva was appointed CEO of the radio by the Council of Electronic Media and was re-elected in 2004.

Violina Marinova – chairwoman of the management board and CEO of DSK Bank
Marinova has more than 30 years’ experience in the banking sphere, all of which are with DSK. She started in 1971 as an accountant and later became head of the second DSK branch, and deputy chairperson of the managerial council. From 2001-2004, Marinova was a member of the management board and executive director of the bank, and is now the CEO and chairwoman of the management board of the bank. In 2001 and 2006 she was named Banker of the Year.