Michelle O’Neill, the First Minister of Northern Ireland, has been included on the 2024 TIME100 Next list, which was revealed on Wednesday, October 2.
The list, TIME says, recognizes 100 emerging leaders from around the world who are shaping the future and defining the next generation of leadership.
“I am delighted to be named in the 2024 TIME Next 100 list, recognising leaders from across the world in every sphere of life,” O’Neill said on X on Wednesday, October 2, the day the list was published.
“I will continue to lead positive change and work to build a brighter future for everyone as First Minister for all.”
I am delighted to be named in the 2024 TIME Next 100 list, recognising leaders from across the world in every sphere of life.
I will continue to lead positive change and work to build a brighter future for everyone as First Minister for all. pic.twitter.com/CbC0ZqOsKb
— Michelle O’Neill (@moneillsf) October 2, 2024
O’Neill, who is also the Vice President of Sinn Féin and the party's leader in the North, was among 19 people included in the ‘Leaders’ portion of this year's TIME100 Next list. Other categories in the list are Phenoms, Advocates, and Innovators, as well as Artists, where Irish actress Nicola Coughlan made the cut this year.
Profiling her party colleague for the TIME100 Next feature, Mary Lou McDonald, the President of Sinn Féin and a TD in Dublin, highlighted how O’Neill made history in February by “becoming the north of Ireland’s first Irish nationalist First Minister, in a state designed to ensure this could never happen.”
McDonald said that O'Neill's election earlier this year "reflects the current of powerful generational change under way in Ireland.
"There now exists an opportunity to build a bright new future of unity, success, and achievement. A future for everybody."
Michelle O'Neill and Mary Lou McDonald. (Getty Images)
McDonald went on to praise O'Neill's leadership skills, ability to listen and understand others, as well as her eagerness to reach out, which "make a real and lasting difference."
O'Neill, McDonald said, "is determined to consign the failed politics of sectarianism, inequality, and exclusion to the past.
"From day one, she said that she would be a 'First Minister for all.'
"She has been true to her word every day since, and I am so very proud to call her my friend."
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