World leaders

This archive gathers solutions-focused reporting on milestones involving heads of state, heads of government, and other senior officials shaping policy worldwide. Stories here highlight moments when political leadership produced measurable progress on climate, public health, diplomacy, and more.

Good news, for article on Mexico's first female president

Claudia Sheinbaum is sworn in as Mexico’s first female president

By / / Good News For Humankind

Claudia Sheinbaum won Mexico’s presidency with roughly 59% of the vote in June 2024 — the largest margin in the country’s modern democratic era — and took office as the first woman and first Jewish person to lead the nation of 130 million. A climate scientist with a doctorate in energy engineering, she contributed to landmark IPCC reports before entering politics, and as Mexico City’s environment secretary she helped launch the Metrobús system that reshaped how millions get around. In her first months in office, she used a legislative supermajority to write universal healthcare and inflation-beating minimum wage protections directly into the constitution. Her rise signals that scientific expertise and bold social reform can sit at the very center of democratic leadership.

Francia Marquez, for article on Francia Márquez vice president

Colombia elects first Black woman vice president, Francia Marquez

By / / Good News For Humankind

Francia Márquez became Colombia’s first Black woman vice president on June 19, 2022, winning alongside Gustavo Petro with just over half the national vote. A former housekeeper and single mother from Cauca, one of Colombia’s poorest provinces, she rose to office through years of grassroots organizing against illegal gold mining — work that earned her the Goldman Environmental Prize and, along the way, death threats she refused to back down from. Now leading a new equality ministry, she’s focused on women’s rights, rural health care, and education for communities long shut out. Her election doesn’t undo generations of exclusion, but it changes what’s imaginable — for Afro-Colombian girls, for environmental defenders, and for movements everywhere insisting the overlooked belong at the table.