Gladys Berejiklian

Gladys Berejiklian

Gladys Berejiklian is an Australian politician serving as the 45th and current Premier of New South Wales. She assumed the role on 23 January 2017 following the resignation of Mike Baird. She has been a member of the NSW Legislative Assembly since 2003, representing the seat of Willoughby. Before becoming Premier, she was the Treasurer and Minister for Industrial Relations in the second Baird government.

About Gladys Berejiklian in brief

Summary Gladys BerejiklianGladys Berejiklian is an Australian politician serving as the 45th and current Premier of New South Wales. She assumed the role on 23 January 2017 following the resignation of Mike Baird. She has been a member of the NSW Legislative Assembly since 2003, representing the seat of Willoughby. Before becoming Premier, she was the Treasurer and Minister for Industrial Relations in the second Baird government. She also served as the Minister for Transport in the O’Farrell and first Baird governments. She was also the Deputy Leader of the New South NSW Liberal Party between 2014 and 2017. She is the eldest of three daughters born to Armenian immigrant parents, Krikor and Arsha. Her grandparents were orphaned in the Armenian Genocide in 1915. She attended North Ryde High School, which became Peter Board High School from 1986, a public, co-educational school in NorthRyde. She joined the Liberal Party in 1993 and was president of the Young Liberals from 1997 to 1998, being the third female president in its history.

In 2015, she attended a commemoration ceremony in Yerevan, Armenia, for the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. She has a Bachelor of Arts and a graduate diploma in international studies from the University of Sydney and a Masters in Commerce from the university. She currently lives in Sydney with her husband and their two children. She works as a business consultant and is a volunteer with the Girl Guides of NSW and the Australian Council of Trade and Industry. She previously worked for Peter Collins and Senator Helen Coonan and the Commonwealth Bank as general manager, Youth Retail Banking and Government & Industry Affairs. She won Liberal preselection in 2003 when former Opposition Leader Peter Collins, who had represented theWilloughby area since 1981, decided to retire. She easily saw off a rematch with Pat Reilly after picking up a healthy swing of 14. 5 points, enough to revert the seat to its traditional status as a comfortably safe Liberal seat.