Liri Berisha | |
Birth Date: | 5 July 1948 |
Birth Place: | Tirana, Albania |
Birthname: | Slobodanka Ramaj |
Office: | First Lady of Albania |
Term Label: | In role |
Term Start: | 9 April 1992 |
Term End: | 24 July 1997 |
President: | Sali Berisha |
Predecessor: | Semiramis Xhuvani (1986) |
Successor: | Lidra Meidani |
Office1: | Spouse of the Prime Minister of Albania |
Term Label1: | In role |
Term Start1: | 11 September 2005 |
Term End1: | 15 September 2013 |
Primeminister1: | Sali Berisha |
Predecessor1: | Xhoana Nano |
Successor1: | Linda Rama |
Nationality: | Albanian |
Alma Mater: | University of Tirana |
Children: | 2 |
Liri Berisha (; born 5 July 1949) is an Albanian pediatrician and president of the Albanian Children Foundation, and also a UNICEF ambassador.
She is the wife of Sali Berisha, the former President and Prime Minister of Albania, with whom she has two children, daughter Argita and son Shkëlzen.
Liri Berisha was born Slobodanka Ramaj. She is the daughter of Rexhep Ramaj Balidemaj, an ethnic Albanian from Martinovići near Plav, at the time part of Yugoslavia (now Montenegro), and Milica Bulatović, a Montenegrin woman. After the Yugoslav–Albanian split in 1948, her name was changed by the government to Liri Ramaj.
In 2008, Berisha founded the Mother Teresa Cultural Foundation.[1] In 2009, the Women's Information Network named Berisha "Woman of the Year".[2]
Berisha joined Autism Speaks in 2011 in celebrating the opening of a new centre for autistic children in Albania, calling the centre a way to improve the lives of children with autism there.[3]