Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern bowed out of parliament Wednesday, ending a career marked by empathetic leadership during times of crisis even as she faced escalating abuse online.
Ardern shocked New Zealand earlier this year when she announced she was stepping down as prime minister and retiring from politics, saying she no longer had "enough in the tank".
The 42-year-old, once the youngest woman leader in the world, said in her final speech to parliament that she never expected to take the nation's top job.
"It was a cross between a sense of duty to steer a moving freight train... and being hit by one," she quipped during her valedictory address.
"And that's probably because my internal reluctance to lead was matched only by a huge sense of responsibility."
Ardern steered New Zealand through natural disasters, the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre -- in which a white supremacist gunman killed 51 Muslim worshippers.
