Career
She is daughter of José Júlio Pizarro Beleza and Maria dos Prazeres Lançarote Couceiro da Costa. Her brother is Luís Miguel Beleza.
Member of the Social Democratic Party, she served twice as Minister of Health in the Portuguese government. She is presently the 1st President of the Champalimaud Foundation.
Leonor Beleza is a graduate of the University of Lisbon Law School, where she has also worked as an Assistant Professor. During a distinguished professional career she has held a number of high-profile public offices. Among other positions, she was Secretary of State of the Presidency of the Cabinet (1982-1983), Secretary of State for Social Security (1983-1985), and Minister of Health (1985-1990) in the Portuguese Government. She has been elected as a Member of Parliament on several occasions and on two occasions she has served as Vice-President of the Parliament (1991-1994, 2002-2005). In addition to her prominent role in public affairs Mrs Beleza has also played an active role in the private sector.
Leonor Beleza is currently the Chairman of the Portuguese League for People with Physical Disabilities, Chairman of the Advisory Board of the D. Pedro IV Foundation, and a member of the General Councils of the CEBI Foundation and of the Gil Foundation. She is also a vigorous campaigner for women’s rights, a cause she has supported for many years. In 2004, Leonor Beleza was appointed Chairman of the Champalimaud Foundation by the will of António Champalimaud.
Read more about this topic: Leonor Beleza
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)