Jacinda Ardern

Biography

Jacinda Kate Laurell Ardern was born in Hamilton, New Zealand, in 1980 and grew up in Morrinsville and Murupara. She joined the Labour Party at seventeen and graduated from the University of Waikato in 2001. She worked as a researcher in Prime Minister Helen Clark's office and then in London as a policy adviser in the Cabinet Office under Tony Blair, and in 2008 she was elected president of the International Union of Socialist Youth.

She entered Parliament as a list MP in 2008 and won the Mount Albert by-election in 2017. She became Labour's deputy leader in March 2017 and its leader that August, weeks before the general election. Labour gained 14 seats, and after negotiations she formed a coalition with New Zealand First and the support of the Greens, becoming at 37 the world's youngest female head of government; in 2018 she gave birth while in office.

After the Christchurch mosque shootings in March 2019 she moved quickly to tighten gun laws and, with Emmanuel Macron, launched the Christchurch Call against extremist content online. Her government's strict response to COVID-19 kept the virus largely out of the country in 2020, and that October Labour won an outright majority. She resigned as prime minister and party leader in January 2023 and left Parliament that April.