Sanna Marin

Biography

Sanna Marin was born in Helsinki in 1985 and moved as a child with her mother to Tampere; she was raised by her mother and her mother's female partner. The first in her family to go to university, she studied administrative science at the University of Tampere from 2007, completing her master's in 2017. She joined the Social Democratic Youth in 2006, was elected to Tampere City Council in 2012 and chaired it from 2013 to 2017.

Elected to Parliament for Pirkanmaa in 2015, she became minister of transport and communications in June 2019. When Antti Rinne resigned that December, the Social Democrats chose her to succeed him, and she took office on 10 December 2019 at the age of 34, the youngest prime minister in Finnish history. She became party leader in August 2020.

Her government invoked a state of emergency during the COVID-19 pandemic and, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, she and President Sauli Niinistö announced in May 2022 that Finland would apply to join NATO; Finland became a member in April 2023. Her party finished third in the April 2023 election, and Petteri Orpo succeeded her in June. She left Parliament in September 2023 to become a strategic adviser at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.