Early Life
Born in The Hague, Rutte attended a gymnasium high school, specialising in the arts, from 1979 till 1985. Although his original ambition was to attend the conservatory and become a concert pianist, he went to study history at Leiden University, where he obtained a MA degree in History in 1992. He combined his studies with a position on the board of the Youth Organisation Freedom and Democracy, the youth organisation of the VVD, of which he was chairperson between 1988 and 1991.
After his studies he entered the business world, working as a manager for Unilever and Calvé. Until 1997 he was part of the human resource-department of Unilever and played a leading role in several reorganisations. Between 1997 and 2000 he was personnel manager for Van den Bergh Nederland, a subsidiary of Unilever. In 2000 he became member of the Corporate Human Resources Group. And since 2002 he was director of Human Resources for IgloMora Groep, another subsidiary of Unilever.
Between 1993 and 1997 he was a member of the national board of the VVD. He also served as a member of the VVD candidate committee for the general election of 2002. He was himself elected as a member of parliament in 2003.
Read more about this topic: Mark Rutte
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The girl must early be impressed with the idea that she is to be “a hand, not a mouth”; a worker, and not a drone, in the great hive of human activity. Like the boy, she must be taught to look forward to a life of self-dependence, and early prepare herself for some trade or profession.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“The quality of American life is an insult to the possibilities of human growth ... the pollution of American space, with gadgetry and cars and TV and box architecture, brutalizes the senses, making gray neurotics of most of us, and perverse spiritual athletes and strident self-transcenders of the best of us.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)