Stefanos Kasselakis, 35, became the first openly gay leader of a party in Greece. Kasselakis, a former Goldman Sachs CEO, volunteered for US President Joe Biden's campaign in 2008.
After the resignation of leader Alexis Tsipras in Greece, Stefanos Kasselakis was elected as the party leader in the election held on September 24, 2023, in the main opposition party SYRIZA (Radical Left Coalition - Progressive Alliance) with 56.65 percent of the votes.
35-year-old Kasselakis was born on March 29, 1988, in Marusi, Greece. At the age of 14, he won a silver medal in the Greek Mathematical Society's Archimedes Mathematics Competition.
Former CEO of Goldman Sachs
He immigrated to the USA in the same year and completed his undergraduate education in Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. While he was a student in the USA, he volunteered for Joe Biden in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries.
Stefanos Kasselakis (born 1988) is a Greek entrepreneur and politician, who is currently serving as the president of Syriza.
He worked as CEO at Goldman Sachs in 2009.
Goldman Sachs is a US multinational investment bank. Founded in 1869, the company is headquartered in New York.
Goldman Sachs is one of the world's largest banks by revenue and ranks 57th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. companies by total revenue.
In 2005, Goldman Sachs predicted that China, India, Russia, and Brazil would be on the path of economic development and have the highest economic growth rate by 2010, later the prediction turned out to be correct, which increased the reputation of the bank.
He became the first openly gay party leader
Kasselakis, of Cretan origin, who is the first openly gay candidate to run for the leadership of a party, is known for his defense of LGBTI+ rights.
Kasselakis met SYRIZA in 2021. Kasselakis became a parliamentary candidate in the May and June 2023 general elections at the invitation of Tsipras, who brought SYRIZA to power in 2015 but could not enter the parliament.
Kasselakis' lack of a seat in parliament will be a disadvantage he will have to overcome.