Jennifer Geerlings-Simons
Surinamese physician and politician
Jennifer Geerlings-Simons (née Simons; born 5 September 1953) is a Surinamese politician and former physician who is serving as the eleventh president of Suriname since 16 July 2025. A member of the National Democratic Party (NDP), she has been the party's president since 2024.
Geerlings-Simons began her career as a physician, working as a dermatologist, and later in the National HIV/AIDS program. In 1996, she joined politics and was elected to the National Assembly in the general elections. Shortly after the 2010 general elections, Geerlings-Simons was elected the chairperson of the National Assembly from 2010 to 2020, becoming the second female to hold this role.
In July 2024, Geerlings-Simons became the president of the National Democratic Party after the death of Dési Bouterse. The following year in May 2025, she led the party to a first-place plurality in the general election held on 25 May. Geerlings-Simons was subsequently elected President on 6 July 2025, becoming the first female president in the nation's history.
Early life and career
Simons grew up in Paramaribo, as the oldest of four children. She studied medicine at the University of Suriname, graduating in 1979.
“Jennifer Geerlings-Simons” enters the record as surinamese physician and politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Jennifer, Geerlings-Simons and Surinamese can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q440403. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1953, 2025, 2024 and 1996.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jennifer Geerlings-Simons” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.