Michaëlle Jean is the 27th Governor General, Commander-in-Chief of Canada, sworn in September 2005 for a five-year mandate. As soon as the mandate ended, in October 2010, the United Nations called on her to become a Special Envoy of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to support reconstruction efforts in Haiti, her country of birth, which had been devastated that same year as a result of a powerful earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands, with as many wounded and displaced. From 2011 to 2014, Michaëlle Jean also served as Chancellor of the University of Ottawa, where her offices as UNESCO Special Envoy were hosted. In November  2014, Michaëlle Jean became the third Secretary General of the International Organisation of La La Francophonie at the 15th Summit of Heads of State and Government held in Dakar, a position to which she devoted her energies from January 2015 to 2019. Together with her husband, filmmaker Jean-Daniel Lafond, she founded and chairs the Fondation Michaëlle Jean Foundation, whose programmes, through art and culture, support civic initiatives and some of the most vulnerable and disenfranchised young people in Canada.