Biography

Andrej Kiska was born to teacher parents on 2 February 1963. He is married to his second wife and has 4 children. In 1986, he received his engineering degree in microelectronics at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava. After graduation he worked as design engineer at Naftoprojekt Company in Poprad. In 1990, he went to the United States, where he worked as a shop assistant at a petrol station store and later as a construction site handyman. One and a half years later, he returned to Slovakia where he became co-owner of a company that went bankrupt after a few weeks.

For more than 15 years, he held various management positions and conducted business activities. He founded several companies, the most successful of which were Triangle and Quatro established in 1996. During their existence, these companies provided financial services to more than 1 million people and became the most successful hire-purchase companies in Slovakia. In 2005 he sold his entire stake in these companies to the VUB bank and decided to devote himself to charity work.

In 2006 he founded together with a friend Good Angel, a non-profit company for whose financing he donated one million euro of his own money. Good Angel helps families with children which have found themselves in financial distress because of a serious, life-threatening illness, and has become the most successfull non-corporate charity in Slovakia today. In 2011 he co-founded a Good Angel company in the Czech Republic.

In 2006, he won the Trend magazine award Manager of the Year, and in 2011 he was awarded the Crystal Wing for philanthropy.

In 2012, Andrej Kiska decided to run for president as independent and non-partisan candidate. The reason for this decision was his indignation at the state of Slovak society where established politicians often forget the problems of real people.

In presidential election run-off on 29 March 2014 he was elected president of the Slovak Republic. He received the votes of 1,307,065 voters, representing 59.38 percent of all ballots cast. He assumed the office of the President of the Slovak Republic after taking the oath of office at the inauguration ceremony on 15 June 2014.

Comenius University in Bratislava awarded Kiska with the Commemorative medal.

Under the State Decorations Act, Andrej Kiska as President of the Slovak Republic holds the 1st class Andrej Hlinka Order, the 1st class Ľudovít Štúr Order, the 1st class Milan Rastislav Štefánik Cross, and the 1st Class Pribina Cross.