Gianna Angelopoulos is an Olympic organizer, former ambassador of the Greek state, lawyer, former parliamentarian, and best-selling author. In 1986, Ambassador Angelopoulos was elected to the Athens Municipal Council. In 1989, she was elected to parliament, and won reelection the following year.
Following her marriage to Theodore Angelopoulos, Gianna resigned her seat in the Parliament to focus on family and business. In 1996, the prime minister of Greece appointed her to lead the country's successful campaign to host the 2004 Olympic Games. In 2000, when slow progress and gridlocked bureaucracy put Athens in danger of losing the Games, she was asked to assume the presidency of the Athens 2004 Organizing Committee and save the project.
Her memoir, My Greek Drama: Life, Love, and One Woman's Olympic Effort to Bring Glory to Her Country, was published by Greenleaf Book Group in May 2013,and became a top ten New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller.
At Harvard, Mrs. Angelopoulos has served as vice-chairman of the Dean's Council of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government since 1994 and now also serves as a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Business and Government. She established the Angelopoulos Global Public Leaders Program to bring distinguished leaders to the HKS to share lessons learned with students and plan for their next phases of contribution to the common good.
Mrs. Angelopoulos is also the founder and sponsor of the Angelopoulos CGIU Fellowship Program, a leading philanthropist for projects in Greece and around the globe, and a proud parent of three grown children and two beautiful granddaughters.
