Her Excellency Maria Leissner was elected the Secretary General in April, 2012, becoming the first Secretary General of the Community of Democracies (CD). Prior to the office, she was Sweden’s Ambassador at large for Democracy, and led the CD Working Group on Governance that proposed the recent reforms of the CD. Maria Leissner was a member of the Parliament of Sweden from 1985 – 1991, after leading the Swedish Liberal Youth organization both as Secretary General and as President. As a MP, she served in the Foreign Affairs Committee and was a party spokesperson for refuge- and immigration issues. In 1995, she was elected as the leader of the Liberal Party, the first female leader of the party.

She joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2000 and was Ambassador to Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Belize and Costa Rica from 2000 to 2004. She led a governmental delegation for Roma issues in from 2006 to 2010, including the production of a state investigation of the situation of the Roma minority in Sweden. She was the chair of the board of the University College of Borås from 2007 to 2010. Ambassador Leissner has also served internationally as the Director for NDI’s Governance program in Iraq (2004-2005) and as a Senior Advisor for Human Rights at AMM (EU/ASEAN peace monitoring mission) in Aceh, Indonesia (2005-2006). She has participated in a large number of election monitoring and other short term democracy-related missions with SIDA, the Scandinavian Institute for African Studies, NDI, and etc.