Vaira Vike-Freiberga was elected president of the Republic of Latvia on 17 June 1999. From 1998-99, she was director of the Latvian Institute in Riga. Previously she served as president of the Canadian Psychological Association, the Social Science Federation of Canada, and the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (USA); vice chairwoman of the Science Council of Canada; and chaired the Human Factors Panel of the NATO Science program as its Canadian representative. She is currently the president of the Academie des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines of the Royal Society of Canada (Canada¹s National Academy).

Vike-Freiberga holds a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. from McGill University. She retired as professor emerita from the Universite de Montreal in 1998 after a 33-year career teaching psychology. She holds honorary degrees from Victoria University, Toronto; University of Latvia; Kaunas Vytautas Magnus University; and McGill University, Montreal. She was appointed to the Council of Women World Leaders (Harvard University, 1999) and elected full member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences (1999). Vike-Freiberga is co-author of several databases of Latvian folk songs, the author of several books, numerous articles, scholarly papers, speeches, and allocutions in English, French, and Latvian.