Profile of a President

Position: President of Brazil

Incumbent: Dilma Rousseff

Date of Birth: Dec. 14, 1947

Term: Sworn in on Jan. 1, 2011 for a four-year term. Eligible to be re-elected once.

Key Facts:

-- A left-wing activist-turned-technocrat, Rousseff is the first woman President of Latin America's largest economy. She has continued the mostly market-friendly economic policies of her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and favours a strong role for the state in key sectors of the economy.

-- Rousseff made her political breakthrough when, as energy minister, she impressed President Lula with her managerial skills and technical capacity. She also chaired the board of directors of state-owned oil company Petrobras

-- In the influential post of chief of staff, she was dubbed the iron lady for her curt and demanding management style, and was in charge of managing many of Brazil's infrastructure projects and prepared the legislative framework to develop vast new oil reserves.

-- She won the 2010 run-off presidential election on the back of a booming economy and support from her mentor, the hugely popular Lula.  

The daughter of a well-to-do Bulgarian immigrant, Rousseff was born into a middle-class family and did post-graduate studies in economics.

-- After a 1964 coup gave rise to a military dictatorship, Rousseff joined a radical leftist resistance group. She says she never engaged in armed conflict but was imprisoned for three years on charges of subversion and repeatedly tortured by her military captors.

-- Rousseff has pursued a mix of market-friendly policies with a strong role for the state in economic development, particularly in the energy sector as Brazil develops massive new offshore oil fields in the coming decade.

-- Rousseff is perceived as taking a tougher line on corruption within government than her predecessors, a stance which popularity polls suggest has found favour with a surging middle class. Six of her ministers have resigned in her first 10 months in office, five of them over ethics breaches.