Oddny Aleksandersen

Who is Oddny Aleksandersen?

Oddny Aleksandersen, born 5 February 1942, is a Norwegian politician for the Labour Party.

Born in Vadsø, she chaired the local party chapter in Vadsø from 1979 to 1982 and was a member of the executive committee of Vadsø municipal council from 1979 to 1983. Elected to the county council in 1983, she served as deputy county mayor for one term, and acting county mayor from May 1986 to April 1987, during the illness of county mayor Helmer Mikkelsen.

On the national level, she served briefly as personal secretary in the Ministry of Justice and the Police in 1981. She was later Minister of Government Administration and Labour from September 1992 to October 1993, in the third cabinet Brundtland. She was the third woman in a row to hold this position; the first man to be Minister of Government Administration was Nils Olav Totland, who succeeded Aleksandersen in 1993.

Outside of politics, she took her education here and there, in Nesna, Trondheim and Tromsø, finally taking the cand.mag. degree in 1996. She has worked as a school teacher in Sør-Varanger and Vadsø from 1968 to 1972 and 1982 to 1984, as a secretary in the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation from 1972 to 1979, as a consultant in Finnmark county municipality from 1980 to 1982 and in the administrative department of the University of Tromsø from 1990 to 2007.