Kazimira Prunskienė was the first Prime Minister of Lithuania after declaring independence from the USSR in 1990.

Kazimira Prunskienė was born in 1943 and received a degree in economics from the University of Vilnius in 1965. Prunskiené went on to earn her doctorate in the subject. After earning her doctorate, she taught at the University of Vilnius as an instructor and went on to become a senior associate in the Department of Industrial Economics.Prunskiene joined the Lithuanian Communist Party in 1980, and began acting as deputy director of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic’s Agricultural Economics Research Institute. In 1988 she helped found Sąjūdis, the precursor to Lithuania's largest pro-independence group.

Prunskienė was elected a member of the Seimas, Lithuania’s legislative body, in 1996 and remained a member through 2008. From 2004 - 2008, Prunskienė served as Lithuania’s Minister of Agriculture.​Following her resignation from office, Prunskiene headed Lithuania’s Department of Agriculture, as well as led the National Farmer’s Party, before leaving in 2009 to establish the Lithuanian People’s Party.  

Prunskienė has been involved with a number of different political parties. In 1995, she was elected leader of the Lithuanian Women’s Party. She then founded the Lithuanian Peasant Popular Union, which she was involved with until 2009, when she left to establish the Lithuanian People’s Party.

​Prunskiene went on to found the Lithuanian-European Institute, and in 1995 was elected leader of the Lithuanian Women's Party. She has published 15 books, including The Role of Women in Democracy: The Experience of Lithuania, which discusses the status of women and gender equality in Lithuania.