Yingluck Shinawatra is the youngest of nine children of Loet Shinawatra and Yindi Ramingwong. Her father was a businessman and member of parliament for Chiang Mai. Her paternal family is of Hakka Chinese origin, descending from Seng Saekhu (her great-grandfather) who immigrated from Meizhou, Guangdong, to Siam in the 1860s, becoming a tax farmer in Chiang Mai. On her maternal side, she is a descendant of the former royal family of Chiang Mai through her grandmother, Princess Chanthip na Chiangmai (great-great-granddaughter of Prince Thammalangka who ruled Chiang Mai in the early-19th century). Yingluck grew up in Chiang Mai and attended Regina Coeli College, a private girls’ school, for the lower secondary level, followed by Yupparaj College, a co-educational school, at the upper secondary level. She graduated with a BA degree from the Faculty of Political Science and Public Administration, at Chiang Mai University in 1988 and received a MPA degree (specialisation in Management Information Systems) from Kentucky State University in 1991.

Yingluck began her career as a sales and marketing intern in 1993 at Shinawatra Directories Co., Ltd., a telephone directory business founded by AT&T International. She later became the director of procurement and the director of operations. In 1994, she became the general manager of Rainbow Media, a subsidiary of International Broadcasting Corporation (which later became TrueVisions). She left as Deputy CEO of IBC in 2002, and became the CEO of Advanced Info Service (AIS), Thailand’s largest mobile phone operator. After the sale of Shin Corporation (the parent company of AIS) to Temasek Holdings, Yingluck resigned from AIS, but remained Managing Director of SC Asset Co Ltd, the Shinawatra family property development company. She was investigated by Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission regarding possible insider trading after she sold shares of her AIS stock for a profit prior to the sale of the Shin Corporation to Temasek Holdings. However, no charges were filed. Yingluck Shinawatra is also a committee member and secretary of the Thaicom Foundation.

Yingluck received 0.68 percent of Shin Corp shares out of the 46.87 percent that Thaksin Shinawatra and his then-wife held in 1999. The military junta-appointed Assets Examination Committee charged that Yingluck made up false transactions and that “there were no real payments for each Ample Rich Co., Ltd shares sold” and “the transactions were made at a cost basis of par value in order to avoid income taxes, and all the dividends paid out by Shin to those people were transferred to [her sister-in-law] Potjaman’s bank accounts”. However, the AEC did not pursue a case against her. Yingluck, in response, claimed that “her family has been a victim of political persecution”.

Exit polls indicated a landslide victory, with Pheu Thai projected to win as many as 310 seats in the 500-seat parliament. However, the official result was 265 seats and 47 percent of the vote for Pheu Thai, with a 75.03 percent election turnout rate. There were 3 million invalid ballots; the large number was cited as the cause for the difference between the exit poll results and the official count. It was only the 2nd time in Thai history that a single party won more than half of the seats in parliament; the first time was in 2005 with Thaksin’s own Thai Rak Thai Party.

Based on the 2007 Thai constitution, public officials can be charged and imprisoned for abuse of power and negligence, even without proof of corruption.

After the governing People’s Power party was dissolved and its executive board was banned from political activity for five years by the Constitutional Court on 2 December 2008, the former People’s Power Party MPs formed the Pheu Thai Party. Yingluck was asked to become the party’s leader, but she declined, saying that she had no desire to be prime minister and wanted to concentrate on business. Yongyuth Wichaidit became the leader of the party.

Yingluck’s bank account was among 86 accounts that the Abhisit government accused of being used to finance the Red Shirt protesters during their demonstrations in 2010. Abhisit accused the Red Shirts of trying to overthrow the monarchy, something they denied. However, the government did not pursue any legal action against her. The Department for Special Investigation found that from 28 April 2009 to May 2010, 150 million baht was deposited into one of her accounts while 166 million baht was withdrawn. On 28 April 2010 alone, 144 million baht was withdrawn.

Yongyuth had stated his intention of resigning as party leader in late 2010. Speculation about a snap election in early 2011 heightened internal debate over the party leadership. The front runners were Yingluck and Mingkwan Sangsuwan, who had led the opposition in an unsuccessful motion of no confidence against the Democrat Party-led coalition government. As late as 28 January 2011, Yingluck continued to rule out the party leadership, repeating that she wanted to focus on business. However, she was endorsed by veteran politician Chalerm Yubamrung.

US diplomatic cables leaked in 2011 revealed that during a 9 September 2009 meeting, former Deputy Prime Minister and “close Thaksin ally” Sompong Amornvivat told Ambassador to Thailand Eric John that he did not envision a big role for Yingluck in the Pheu Thai Party, and that “Thaksin himself was not eager to raise her profile within the party, and was more focused on finding ways to keep his own hand active in politics.” However, in a subsequent cable dated 25 November 2009, the ambassador noted that in a meeting with Yingluck, she spoke with confidence about the “operations, strategy and goals” of the Pheu Thai party and seemed “far more poised” than in previous meetings. The cable cited Yingluck saying that, “Someone could easily emerge relatively late in the game to take the reins of the party and serve as the next Prime Minister.”

On 16 May 2011, the Pheu Thai party voted to name Yingluck as their top candidate under the party-list system (and presumably be the party’s nominee for Prime Minister) for parliamentary election scheduled for 3 July. However, she was not made party leader and did not join the party’s executive board. The ultimate decision was made by Thaksin himself. “Some said she is my nominee. That’s not true. But it can be said that Yingluck is my clone… Another important thing is that Ms Yingluck is my sister and she can make decisions for me. She can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on my behalf,” noted Thaksin in an interview.

The 2011 rainy season saw the highest levels of rainfall in Thailand in the previous 50 years. Flooding started in northern Thailand on 31 July, a week prior to Yingluck’s appointment as Prime Minister. Flooding quickly spread from the North to the Central Chao Phraya River Basin, and by the beginning of October, the province of Ayutthaya, north of Bangkok, was almost flooded. The floods were the worst in Thailand in over 50 years. Yingluck established centralised flood monitoring and relief operations in mid-August and made tours of flooded provinces beginning 12 August. Yingluck also pledged to invest in long-term flood prevention projects, including the construction of drainage canals. Flood reduction measures were hampered by disputes between people on the different sides of flood barriers: those on the flooded side in some instances sabotaged the barriers, sometimes resulting in armed confrontation. Opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva and military leaders called for Yingluck to declare a state of emergency, claiming that it would give the military greater authority to deal with embankment sabotage. A state of emergency had last been declared in 2010 during the Abhisit-government’s crackdown on anti-government protesters. Yingluck refused to declare a state of emergency, saying that it would not improve flood management. Instead, she invoked the 2007 Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Act and issued a disaster warning which gave her government greater authority to manage flood control and drainage.

On 18 January 2012, Yingluck reshuffled her cabinet, assigning six cabinet members to new posts, naming ten new ministers and deputies and dismissing nine members of the government. The regrouping was assessed as a step to increase loyalty to the head of government and a reaction to discontent with the government’s management of the flood disaster. Especially noted was the choice of Nalinee Taveesin (Minister in the PM’s Office), who is on a US blacklist for alleged business links to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, and Nattawut Saikua (Deputy Minister of Agriculture), the first leader of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD, or “Red Shirts”) in the government. Yingluck’s first cabinet had not incorporated any “Red Shirts” activists.

On 30 June 2013, the fifth reshuffle occurred in the cabinet of Yingluck, leading to changes in 18 cabinet posts. She herself assumed the post of minister of defence in the reshuffle.

On 9 December 2013, Yingluck dissolved the country’s parliament and called early elections in the face of anti-government protests.

Despite being chairperson of the rice committee, Yingluck admitted in the 2013 censure debate against her government that she had never attended meetings of the National Rice Policy Committee.

On 7 May 2014, the Constitutional Court unanimously dismissed Yingluck from office in consequence of her removing an appointee of an earlier government, Thawil Pliensri, from his post as National Security Council secretary-general in 2011. The court deemed the transfer unconstitutional and therefore, removed Yingluck from office.

On 8 May 2014, the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) unanimously agreed to indict Yingluck in the rice-pledging scheme corruption case citing millions of rice farmers who remain unpaid.

On 28 November, Thailand’s National Legislative Assembly (NLA) denied the addition of 72 pieces of evidence to her rice-pledging case. The first hearing of her impeachment case was also scheduled to be on 9 January 2015.

On 15 January 2016, the trial against Yingluck began.

On 25 August 2017, the scheduled verdict day, Yingluck did not appear before the court, who then issued an arrest warrant for her and confiscated her ฿30,000,000 bail. 3,000 of her supporters gathered outside the court in Bangkok. Reportedly, Yingluck fled the country ahead of the judgment. Some senior members of her political party said she left Thailand the week before to Dubai. The pronouncement was then rescheduled to 27 September 2017.

On 27 September 2017, in her absence, she was found guilty of dereliction of duty over the rice subsidy scheme and was sentenced to five years in prison.