Mimoza Kusari-Lila

Mimoza Kusari-Lila (born 16 October 1975) is a Kosovar politician for The Alternative . She was the deputy prime minister of the Republic of Kosovo and minister of trade and industry from 2011 to 2013 and the mayor of Gjakova from November 2013 to 2017.

Family Mimoza Kusari was born on 16 October 1975 in Gjakova. Her father is a pulmonologist and her mother is a teacher of Albanian language and literature in elementary school. Her family lived for a short time in Peja. They returned to Gjakova with their four children in the mid-1980s.

Education Kusari finished high school at the Hajdar Dushi Gymnasium and then registered in the University of Prishtina, Faculty of Economics. She graduated in management and informations systems, working full-time to fund her studies in a time of economic crisis and political repression. In 1998-1999, when the Kosovo war broke out, she worked for organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

During the Kosovo war, while working in a refugee camp for the American National Public Radio service in the Republic of Macedonia, she won the Ron Brown Scholarship from the United States Department of State to pursue an MBA in the United States.

During her stay in the US, she continued studies at the Institute of Economics, University of Colorado, and Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she completed her master's in e-business. During this time she was very active in organizing the student community and showing leadership skills. She founded and was the first president of the Association of Business Women of Duquesne University and was one of three Ron Brown scholarship holders from Eastern Europe invited to participate in the celebration of International Education Week by Secretary of State Madelaine Albright in Washington, D.C. After her studies, she worked as an intern at Bayer Corporation of North America in Pittsburgh in the department of e-sales.

In 2009, Kusari Lila made official her candidacy for mayor of Gjakova within the party New Kosovo Alliance (AKR). She was named deputy prime minister of Kosovo and minister of commerce and industry on 23 February 2011, She became the first woman mayor in history of Kosovo.