Born 24 October 1949
I was born in Celje; my father was a railwayman and my mother a housewife. I attended primary schools in Rogatec, Šentjur pri Celju, Maribor and Celje, where in 1968 I also completed middle school in economics. After finishing middle school, I took a job and alongside that studied at the Faculty of Economics in Maribor, from where I graduated in autumn 1977. That year I also gave birth to my daughters Senta and Barbara. In middle school I was actively involved in the work of youth organisations at school and later also youth organisation work at the Celje local authority level.
My working career led me from working in a manufacturing company through professional work in politics to work in a retail firm, from where I retired after more than 41 years at work. I began my working life at the Toper clothing factory in Celje in 1968, where initially I worked as a purchasing clerk, and three years later I became a member of a group which began to introduce a new production programme of ski sportswear. At the time of reorganisation in 1977, when we closed TOZD down, I was head of sales and took on sales management for all of the then-Toper’s sales programmes.
After 10 years’ work at Toper, in 1978 I moved to Belgrade as representative (Member of Parliament) of the Republic of Slovenia to the Federal Assembly of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In the Assembly of the Republics and Regions I covered the fields of markets and prices. When I completed my four-year term in 1982, I was appointed Deputy President of the Republican Committee of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia for markets and general economic affairs (the then-State Secretary) and was responsible for prices and market controls. I served two terms in this role, the eight years up to 1990, when I was employed by Slovenia’s leading retail chain Mercator.
At Mercator I worked for several years in purchasing and sales promotions as a deputy member of the management board for sales and purchasing, and in 1996 I took over the leadership of the retail development field. At that time, Mercator was setting out on a new development path via the construction of larger stores (hypermarkets) and shopping centres in Slovenia and a few years later in the countries of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In 2003 I returned to the retail sales field as purchasing director for the system as a whole and later was appointed executive director of the market programme and concluded my working career as an assistant member of the board of Mercator responsible for marketing and purchasing.
At the local elections in autumn 2010, I stood as a candidate on Zoran Janković’s List and became a Ljubljana City Councillor.
I was a candidate on the Zoran Janković List at the local elections in the fall of 2010 and became a city councillor of the City of Ljubljana.
In April 2012, after the Mayor’s return from the Parliament of the Republic of Slovenia to the mayoral position at the City of Ljubljana, I was invited to join his selected work group of colleagues. The decision was not difficult as I have collaborated with most of them in the past and I was acquainted with the results of their work. I joined the group in the beginning of May 2012 as a non-professional Deputy Mayor.