Ellen Eugenia Johnson Sirleaf (born 29 October 1938) is a Liberian politician who served as the 24th president of Liberia from 2006 to 2018. Sirleaf was the first elected female head of state in Africa.

Sirleaf was born in Monrovia to a Gola father and Kru-German mother. She was educated at the College of West Africa. She completed her education in the United States, where she studied at Madison Business College, the University of Colorado Boulder, and Harvard University. She returned to Liberia to work in William Tolbert's government as Deputy Minister of Finance from 1971 to 1974. Later, she worked again in the West, for the World Bank in the Caribbean and Latin America. In 1979, she received a cabinet appointment as Minister of Finance, serving to 1980.

After Samuel Doe seized power in 1980 in a coup d'état and executed Tolbert, Sirleaf fled to the United States. She worked for Citibank and then the Equator Bank. She returned to Liberia to contest a senatorial seat for Montserrado County in 1985, an election that was disputed. She was arrested as a result of her open criticism of the military government in 1985 and was sentenced to ten years imprisonment, although she was later released. Sirleaf continued to be involved in politics. She finished in second place at the 1997 presidential election, which was won by Charles Taylor.

She won the 2005 presidential election and took office on 16 January 2006. She was re-elected in 2011. She was the first woman in Africa elected as president of her country. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, in recognition of her efforts to bring women into the peacekeeping process. She has received numerous other awards for her leadership. In June 2016, Sirleaf was elected as the Chair of the Economic Community of West African States, making her the first woman to hold the position since it was created.

Sirleaf's father was Gola and her mother had mixed Kru and German ancestry.

While not in fact Americo-Liberian in terms of ancestry, because of her parents' upbringing and her own education in the West, Sirleaf is considered to be culturally Americo-Liberian, or assumed to be Americo-Liberian. Her parents both grew up in Monrovia, a center of Americo-Liberian influence, after being born in poor rural areas. Sirleaf does not identify as such.

Sirleaf's father, Jahmale Carney Johnson, was born into a Gola family in an impoverished rural region. He was the son of a minor Gola chief named Jahmale Carney and one of his wives, Jenneh, in Julijuah, Bomi County. Her father was sent to Monrovia for education, where he changed his surname to Johnson due to her father's loyalty to President Hilary R. W. Johnson, Liberia's first native-born president. Jahmale Johnson grew up in Monrovia, where he was raised by an Americo-Liberian family with the surname McCritty. He later entered politics; he was the first Liberian from an indigenous ethnic group to be elected to the country's national legislature.

Sirleaf's mother was also born into poverty, in Greenville. Her grandmother, Juah Sarwee, sent Sirleaf's mother to the capital, Monrovia, when her German husband (Sirleaf's grandfather) had to flee the country after Liberia declared war on Germany during World War I. Cecilia Dunbar, a member of a prominent Americo-Liberian family in the capital, adopted and raised Sirleaf's mother.