People have lost trust in their institutions, whether they be government, media, organized religion or the scientific community. In other countries, voters have been drawn to strongmen and salesmen, wooed by the promise of simple answers to complex questions. Now her challenge is to prove this new style of leadership can get meaningful results, ahead of general elections in September. “Wherever I go,” says the actor Sam Neill, another of New Zealand’s more globally celebrated human resources, “people say, ‘You think we could have Jacinda this week? Could we just borrow her for a while?'”
She has been named one of the most powerful women internationally, mentioned in connection with a Nobel Peace Prize and profiled in glossy media around the world. Her response to the events of the past 12 months has propelled her to the kind of global prominence none of her predecessors enjoyed while in office. Ardern’s real gift is her ability to articulate a form of leadership that embodies strength and sanity, while also pushing an agenda of compassion and community–or, as she would put it, “pragmatic idealism.” Those attributes, however, are just the wrapping. Her gender and youth (she’s 39) were always going to make her stand out in a field dominated mainly by old gray men. But Ardern’s deft and quietly revolutionary management of these crises, especially the Christchurch shootings, got noticed around the globe.
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Nearly any of those would have been enough to capsize an experienced captain with a crack crew of advisers, let alone a rookie with an untested team whose platform was built on kindness, acceptance and inclusion. In the past year, she has been confronted with a mass shooting committed by a far-right extremist, a suddenly active and deadly volcano and, most recently, a global virus that originated in her nation’s most important trading partner. She officially became her country’s leader around the same time she learned she was pregnant with her first child. With a mere seven weeks left in the campaign, she put together enough votes and allies to form a government. Just a few years ago, in 2017, having been a local Member of Parliament for a matter of months, she became a Hail Mary candidate for Prime Minister, a millennial woman thrown into an election at the last minute to resurrect the fortunes of her slumping party in a Pacific Island nation of 4.8 million people. Now she has to persuade her country to keep the faith SHARE Photograph by Djeneba Aduayom for TIME The New Zealand prime minister earned international acclaim for her leadership in the face of tragedy.