Roza Otunbayeva served as the President of Kyrgyzstan from 2010 to 2011. She is the first woman to hold the position as well as the first female Central Asian head of state. 

Otunbayeva was born in Frunze, and graduated from the Philosophy Faculty of Moscow State University in 1972. She earned her Candidate of Sciences in 1975. She became Senior Teacher there and later Head of the Philosophy Department at the Kyrgyz State National University. 

She began her political career in 1981 as the Communist Party’s Second Secretary of the Lenin raion council of Frunze. From 1983 to 1986, she served as Secretary of the City Communist Party Committee in Frunze. Otunbayeva served as Deputy to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers as well as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1986 to 1989. She went on to serve as Vice President of the UNESCO Executive Council from 1989 to 1992.

In 1992, she served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister, before leaving that same year to serve as her country’s first ambassador to the United States and Canada. From 1994 to 1997, she returned to the post of minister of Foreign Affairs. From 1997 to 2002, she served as the Kyrgyz Ambassador to Great Britain and Northern Ireland. She served as Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in the Peacekeeping Mission for Georgia from 2002 to 2004. 

In 2012, Otunbayeva founded the International Public Foundation “Roza Otunbayeva Initiative", which aims to implement programs and projects that support the social, political, and economic development of the Kyrgyz Republic. Otunbayeva is fluent in Kyrgyz, Russian, English, German and French.