Nguyễn Thiện Nhân (born 12 June 1953) is a Vietnamese economist, engineer, professor and politician. He is currently a member of the National Assembly representing Ho Chi Minh City, where he served as its party secretary (de facto mayor) from 2017 until his retirement in 2020. A member of the 11th and 12th Politburo of the Communist Party, he previously served as Chairman of the Vietnamese Fatherland Front from 2013 to 2017 and as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education during Nguyễn Tấn Dũng's premiership. Prior to entering national politics, he worked as a systems engineer in the military before pivoting to academia and then serving in the municipal administration of Ho Chi Minh City, where he was its deputy mayor from 2001 to 2006. He received a BS and a PhD in Cybernetics from the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg in East Germany, an MPA from the University of Oregon as a Fulbright Scholar, and had studied at Harvard University and the Military Medical Academy of Vietnam. Early life and career Nguyễn Thiện Nhân was born on 12 June 1953 in Cà Mau, Vietnam. His family is originally from Chau Thanh, Tra Vinh province. His father Nguyễn Thiện Thành was a professor and a doctor. His father was an intellectual who was active in the Vietnamese independence movement. Under the provisions of the Geneva Accords of 1954, his father brought his family to the North to live in the part of Vietnam under the Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Encouraged by his father, after high school, in June 1970, he enlisted in the Vietnam People's Army as a cadet in the field of engineering. In 1972, he was sent to study abroad at the Technical University of Magdeburg (German: Technische Hochschule Magdeburg) in East Germany. He was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in 1976. In 1979, he successfully defended his PhD thesis in Cybernetics. His doctoral dissertation is Untersuchungen zur automatischen Steuerung der optimalen Fahrweise von Fernwärmeversorgungssystemen (Automated Control Research for the Optimum Operating Method of the Heating System) . After returning home in 1980, he worked as a researcher at the Controlled Arms Institute of the Military Institute of Technology under the Ministry of Defense (now the Missile Institute of the Military Science and Technology Institute) until 1983. Also in 1980, he was admitted to the Communist Party of Vietnam. He was promoted to First Lieutenant in 1980,