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Mikheil Saakashvili

President of Georgia

Date of birth: Dec. 21, 1967

Assumed power on: Jan. 25, 2004

How he got to the top: He led the Rose Revolution.

Educated in law at Columbia University and George Washington University through an Edmund S. Muskie fellowship, Saakashvili was elected to Georgia’s Parliament in 1995. In 2000, he became the country’s justice minister and spearheaded crackdowns on corruption. That soured his relationship with then President Eduard Shevardnadze. In November 2003, tens of thousands Georgians took to the streets to protest flawed parliamentary elections. After days of demonstrations, Saakashvili and supporters stormed the parliament building, waving roses. Shevardnadze resigned, and Saakashvili was elected president the following January, a position he won again in this January’s elections.

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Faure Gnassingbe

President of Togo

Date of birth: June 6, 1966

Assumed power on: Feb. 5, 2005

How he got to the top: His father groomed him for the position.

Gnassingbe’s father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, ruled Togo with an iron fist after a 1967 coup. He prepared his son—who has an MBA from George Washington University—to be his successor by letting him tag along at official functions and appointing him minister of public works, mines, and telecommunications in 2003. Eyadema died in February 2005, and the military installed Gnassingbe as president even though the constitution said the parliament’s speaker was to assume power. Under international pressure, Gnassingbe stepped down 20 days later, but he won the presidency in a disputed April 2005 election that sparked violence clashes.

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Sergei Stanishev

Prime Minister of Bulgaria

Date of birth: May 5, 1966

Assumed power on: Aug. 17, 2005

How he got to the top: He politicked his way to the top of his party.

After earning a Ph.D. in history, he worked as a journalist, covering foreign policy. He became a foreign-policy advisor for the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) in 1995 and was elected to Bulgaria’s National Assembly in 2001. Later that year, he became the BSP’s chairman. In June 2005, the BSP won the largest number of seats in parliament, and after two months of deadlock, the National Assembly voted him prime minister. A relative youngster, he has shown off his wild side: Referring to his longtime live-in girlfriend Elena Yoncheva, he arrived at a 2002 BSP event on a motorcycle with a sign on his back that said, “If you are reading this, Elena must have fallen off on the way.”

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Dmitry Medvedev

President of Russia

Date of birth: Sept. 14, 1965

Assumed power on: May 7, 2008

How he got to the top: He stayed tight with former President Vladimir Putin.

After training as a lawyer, Medvedev worked with Putin in the St. Petersburg Mayor’s Office in the 1990s. By 2000, he was heading Putin’s presidential campaign. In the early 2000’s Medvedev served as chairman of Gazprom, Russia’s natural gas monopoly, and in 2005 became first deputy prime minister in Putin’s administration. He was Putin’s handpicked successor and easily won March’s presidential election. Medvedev let Putin be prime minister, leading many to wonder who’s really running the show. Among Medvedev’s youthful interests: hard-rock group Deep Purple. He listened to banned recordings as a 13-year-old in the late 1970s, and this February when the group was flown to the Kremlin for a concert, he was beaming.