Moldovan President Maia Sandu is a popular choice on lists of up-and-coming world leaders, including a recent one that nicknamed her “the tightrope walker.” Sandu’s task has been daunting—preserving her country’s young democracy while fighting endemic corruption; modernizing Moldova’s economy and turning its focus toward the European Union and away from Russia; and dealing with the pro-Russian breakaway region of Transnistria. And she’s had to take on all of those challenges in the context of the COVID pandemic and the Russian invasion of neighboring Ukraine. The war has sent an estimated 500,000 refugees over the country’s eastern border, of which 100,000 have taken up temporary residence in Moldova. Sandu has shown resilience in the face of challenges and setbacks—as education minister from 2012 to 2015 she was frustrated by the pervasive corruption she observed in Moldova's government, so she and some allies founded their own political party, the Party of Action and Solidarity. In 2019 she lost her post as prime minister after just five months in office, but a year later she was elected president and helped her party sweep into power in parliamentary elections. Sandu says the key to her success has been convincing ordinary Moldovans, who she says were weary of decades of pervasive corruption and scandal in government, that political reforms and an economic and political alignment with Europe hold the key to a better future.

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