Known today as one of the main urban planners of the city of Tuzla and politically active architect during the socialist period, Emina Zaimović was born in 1940 in Tuzla, “the city of salt.” Her elementary school education was partly in Tuzla and partly in Sarajevo. During her childhood, she showed a talent for music. Therefore, she also completed six grades at the elementary music school and two grades at the High School of Music in Tuzla, in the piano department.

After finishing school in Tuzla in 1959 Zaimović went  to Sarajevo to study architecture at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism. After graduating from university, she returned to her hometown Tuzla, where she started working at the Institute for Urban Planning ‘Projekt’ Tuzla. During the 1960s Zaimović worked on different projects such as the creation of the Urban Plan of the city of Tuzla, the creation of regulatory plans for settlements, the design of residential buildings in Slatina, Sjenjak, and buildings in nearby towns, Banovići and Živinice.

She was also engaged as a teacher at the Construction and Surveying School (Građevinsko-geodetska škola) in Tuzla, and in 1979 she was elected vice-president of the Executive Committee of the Tuzla Municipal Assembly. This is also the start of her political career.

Since 1982, Zaimović has been a deputy in the Assembly of the SR BiH, president of the Council of Joint Labor.

In May 1983, Emina Zaimović was elected the president of the Municipal Assembly, becoming the first and, so far, the only female mayor in Tuzla (since 1878 when the first mayor was elected until today). She performed this duty until 1985. Three years later, she was elected a member of the Presidency of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and remained in this position until 1990.

During her professional career, Zaimović participated in the team projects for the design and construction of numerous important facilities in Tuzla, such as the Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine Clinic, the Health Center, SKPC Mejdan (Sport and cultural center), Hotel Tuzla, in the projects related to city heating, water supply and water purification in Tuzla, the construction of the Southern and Northern roads as well as on design of facilities for social protection, such as a retirement’s home and home for children without parental care.

Emina Zaimović will be remembered for many significant results she achieved in her profession; during the period of former Yugoslavia but also after the end of the Bosnian war when she performed the duties of the mayor’s assistant at the Secretariat for Spatial Planning and Environmental Protection (Sekretarijat za prostorno uređenje i zaštitu životne okoline) in Tuzla. She remained in this position until the end of the 1990s, when she retired. She died in February 2022, in the age of 82 in her hometown Tuzla.