Michelle Bachelet

Michelle Bachelet was born in 1951. She is the first woman to become President of Chile. She won the 2006 election in a runoff, campaigning to help reduce the country’s huge gap between rich and poor. In 2008, ‘Time’ magazine ranked her fifteenth on its list of the world's 100 most influential people. She is a qualified surgeon and speaks five languages fluently.

Bachelet was born in Santiago, Chile. Her mother was an archaeologist and her father was an air force officer. She spent most of her childhood traveling around Chile, living on different military bases. She attended a prestigious girls-only public school and excelled in her studies. She started studying medicine in 1970. She said: "It was a concrete way of helping people cope with pain."