- en
Zoran Janković: highly awarded mayor and sports lover
Zoran Janković is a Serbian-Slovenian businessman and mayor of Ljubljana since 2006.
Born in 1953 in Saraorci, a small village in Serbia, Zoran Janković has an interesting biography. During Zoran’s childhood, his family moved to the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana. There, he started his education.
After his graduation, Zoran Janković enrolled into University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Law. Since his youth he was interested in this subject, which led his path to becoming a lawyer and, later on, a politician.
After gaining experience in different, big companies, Zoran Janković started his own one in 1990, named Electa. He was director of this company until 1997, when it established an important partnership with retailer company Mercator. In the same year, he was appointed as CEO of Mercator.
During his time as CEO, Zoran Janković started to receive numerous awards for his accomplishments. The first one was awarded to him in 2001 by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia, for outstanding economic achievements. This was followed with the title of “Manager of the Year 2002”, awarded to him by the Managers Association of Slovenia.
The most notable award came a year after, when Zoran Janković received the Primus award for excellence in communication. This title was given to him by joint effort of three aforemention organizations, alongside Slovenian Public Relations Society.
After all these successful years in the business sphere, Zoran Janković announced his candidacy for the position of mayor of Ljubljana. During the municipal election, Janković won and was inaugurated as mayor in 2006. His first step on this position was reshaping the management team for the city of Ljubljana.
His work was further noted in 2008, when the French newspaper Libération published their list of people shaping the Europe of tomorrow. The list was composed of various commissioners, journalists, ministers, politicians, but there was only one mayor on that list. It was Zoran Janković.
His second most notable strategy during his first term as mayor was the promotion of religious tolerance.
After his re-election in 2010, Mayor of Ljubljana announced the city’s candidacy for World Book Capital 2010. This was important for the future development of the city. Competition for this position was strong, since Vienna, Lisbon, Saint Petersburg and Riga also competed. However, through extensive work done by Mayor Janković, Ljubljana won this award.
Additionally, Ljubljana was named 5th on Forbes list of “Europe’s Most Idyllic Places to Live”. Soon after, Ljubljana was positioned on the first place in the “Most honest cities” list by Reader’s Digest magazine.
Mayor Janković’s work was further recognized by the international community through several awards. In 2012, he was proclaimed as was proclaimed as one of the top 25 mayors in the world.
Besides his political career, mayor Janković is a passionate sports lover. Because of his influence and status, he was able to highly promote sports events and activities in the city. Prior to becoming mayor, Janković was President of Slovenia Handball Association for eight years. Under his supervision, the European Men’s Championship was organized in 2004. The Slovenian team took the silver medal in this tournament, which promoted handball even more throughout the country. In 2005, Zoran Janković was named as first and only Honorary President of Slovenian Handball Association.
