Sanna Marin

Russia's warnings to not join NATO have done little to dampen the resolve of Finland's Prime Minister, Sanna Marin. At just 36, the world's youngest leader ...

"Climate change is the issue that everybody in my generation thinks about. "In Finland, governments tend to be coalition governments. Ms Marin started work at 15 at a bakery and distributed magazines to earn extra cash. "I'm extremely proud of Finland. Here, a poor family's child can educate themselves and achieve their goals in life. Ms Marin has faced her share of challenges while in the top job, including a global pandemic and a fragile political coalition. It appears unlikely to dampen the resolve of either the Finnish or Swedish leaders. "Consensus is critical for a small nation that is next to a big and, unfortunately, war-torn country," Ms Marin told Ulkopolitiikka-lehti, the Finnish Journal of Foreign Affairs. "[Sanna Marin is] a political player … and the advisers sort of concluded we need the Center Party, so we need to give them something, which will not make the Greens happy, which will not make the left happy, but this is compromise," Mr Teivainen says. In her bid to build a future for Finland where "every child can become anything and every person can live and age in a dignified way", tackling climate change was at the top of the agenda. By 27, she was elected to the local council in the southern city of Tampere, an experience that, she says, taught her the "valuable lesson" of reaching across the political divide to form a consensus. From the beginning, Ms Marin has declared she is prepared to make compromises: "We have to be ready to pay a price to put an end to the war." Raised by her working-class mother and her same-sex partner, Ms Marin came from a modest background, becoming the first in her family to finish high school and graduate from university.