March's Assembly election will mark Naomi Long's first as leader of the Alliance Party, a role she took up in October 2016.
Born in 1971, in the heart of what was to become her own constituency, she did not aspire to become a politician.
She earned a Masters degree in engineering at Queen's University, Belfast.
"What I saw in the 70s and 80s was the failure of politics," she told the Belfast News Letter.
"I suppose all I saw were men in grey suits shouting at each other on the television. It just didn't seem to hold any real hope.
"When I went to Queen's (university) I started mixing with people in an integrated environment and I realised very quickly how much people have in common."
She was elected to Belfast City Council in June 2001.
In 2009, she became Belfast's second female lord mayor, and in 2010, she became the MP for East Belfast.
The Alliance party was targeted by loyalists in 2014, angered by their support for a decision to display the union flag at Belfast City Hall on designated days, rather than every day of the year.
Mrs Long received death threats and later revealed she had been secretly battling skin cancer at the time of the unrest.
After losing her Westminster seat in May 2015, she told the BBC she had considered leaving politics, but decided to fight last year's Assembly election.
In October 2016 Mrs Long took over from long-standing Alliance leader David Ford.
Accepting the role, Ms Long said: "Leadership is not just a position, it is an attitude."
"I want to re-energise our membership, but also re-energise a public who are jaded with politics and what passes for politics at Stormont," she told the BBC.
"People who are interested in the political situation, but are not interested in much of what we see happening."
She is the woman who knocked the former DUP leader and first minister, Peter Robinson out of the Westminster seat he had held for more than 30 years.