A pioneering woman is Elias Kanellis’ guest speaker at the sixth event in the series “And These Are Greece,” on Thursday, March 12, at the Athens Conservatory: the first female President of the Hellenic Republic (2020-2025) and the first female President of the Council of State (2028-2020). Katerina Sakellaropoulou.

She comes from Stavroupoli, Xanthi, and was born in Thessaloniki. She is a graduate of Arsakeio and holds a degree from the Law School of the University of Athens (1978). After passing a competitive examination, she was appointed Rapporteur to the Council of State in 1982 and promoted to Associate Judge in 1988 and Counsel in 2000. She served as Associate Judge in the Third Chamber and as Counselor in the Fifth Chamber of the Court. She attended postgraduate courses in public law in France at the University of Paris II.

In 2015, she was promoted to Vice-President and served in the Third Chamber. In 2018, she was elected as the first female President of the Court, a position she held until February 2020.

She served as President of the Association of Judicial Officers of the Court (1993-1995 and 2000-2001) and President of the Environmental Law Association (2015-2019). She taught at the National School of Judicial Officers.

On January 22, 2020, she was elected by the Hellenic Parliament as the first female President of the Hellenic Republic, a position she held until March 13, 2025.

She was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Law School of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2021), the Department of Environment of the Ionian University (2022), and the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the School of Economics and Political Sciences of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2022), the Department of Political Science of the School of Social, Political and Economic Sciences of the Democritus University of Thrace (2023), the School of Social Sciences and Education Sciences of the University of Cyprus (2024) and the Department of Philosophy of the School of Philosophy of the University of Crete (2024).

She contributes to the press by writing articles mainly on issues of environmental and spatial planning law, gender equality, the protection of individual rights, and the rule of law.

She is Chair of the Board of Directors of the Greek Festival.