Valentina Leskaj currently serves as Chairwoman of the Advisory Board of the Albanian Center for Population and Development, which she founded in 1995. She was Member of the Albanian Parliament from 2002 to 2017, when she decided to leave politics. Valentina Leskaj held important leadership roles, among others as Minister of Labor and Social Affairs and a Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Vice President of the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe, Chairwoman of the Parliamentary Commissions for Education and Media and Parliamentary Commission for Country Integration.
She has been Deputy Chair of the EU-Albania, Inter- parliamentary Committee on Stabilization Association for many years. She was head of Albanian Parliament in Council of Europe from 2013-2017 and Reporter of the Council of Europe for Moldova. Alongside her political career, Valentina Leskaj has also been active in academia and civil society activities, authoring many publications on politics, human rights, gender, civil society, population and development issues. From 2013 to 2017 she served as President of the Albania – Israel Friendship Group in the Albanian Parliament.
