Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the current President of Liberia. She served as Minister of Finance under President William Tolbert from 1979 until the 1980 coup d'état, after which she left Liberia and held senior positions at various financial institutions. She placed a distant second in the 1997 presidential election. Later, she was elected President in the 2005 presidential election and took office on 16 January 2006.Johnson-Sirleaf is often referred to as the "Iron Lady", and she is Africa's first elected female head of state. She has pledged to embark on neoliberal reforms.
