Portia Lucretia Simpson-Miller, ON, MP (born 12 December 1945 in Wood Hall, St. Catherine Parish) is Jamaica's Leader of the Opposition and was the country's seventh Prime Minister from 30 March 2006 to 11 September 2007. She was Jamaica's first female Prime Minister. Mrs Simpson-Miller is also a member of the Council of Women World Leaders, an International network of current and former women presidents and prime ministers whose mission is to mobilize the highest-level women leaders globally for collective action on issues of critical importance to women and equitable development.

Political Career

She replaced outgoing Prime Minister P. J. Patterson, becoming the first female head of government of the nation and the third in the Anglophone Caribbean. She also holds the position of president of the opposition People's National Party.

Simpson-Miller had been the Minister of Local Government and Sport since October 2002. She had previously served as Minister of Labour, Welfare and Sports from 1989 to 1993, when she re-entered parliament for South West St. Andrew, the PNP having boycotted the elections called in 1983; she was first elected, for that constituency, in 1976. She was Minister of Labour and Welfare from 1993 to 1995, Minister of Labour, Social Security and Sports from 1995 to February 2000, and Minister of Tourism and Sports from February 2000 to October 2002. She was a Vice President of the PNP from 1978 to 2006. In appointing her first cabinet following her swearing-in, she also assumed the portfolio of defence minister.

Simpson-Miller holds a Bachelor of Arts in public administration from Union Institute & University, a private college specializing in distance learning programs. She has since been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by Union Institute & University.Simpson-Miller is married to The Most Honourable Errald Miller, formerly CEO of Cable & Wireless Jamaica Ltd.On 29 May 2006 she was invested with the Jamaican Order of the Nation, giving her and her husband the style "The Most Honourable"