16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl, has been named Time magazine’s ‘Person of the Year‘ for 2019.

The teenager, who inspired a global movement to fight climate change, becomes the youngest laureate of this distinction, which has been awarded by the magazine in a tradition that started in 1927.

Thunberg kick-started her global movement for climate change in August 2018, by boycotting school.

To register her message, she camped outside the country’s parliament for days wielding a sign painted in black letters on a white background that read Skolstrejk för klimatet: “School Strike for Climate.”

The campaign soon attracted global attention birthing the now popular #FridaysForFuture hashtag.

“I felt everything was meaningless and there was no point going to school if there was no future,” she was quoted to have said.

“I promised myself I was going to do everything I could do to make a difference.”

The magazine added that “in the 16 months since, she has addressed heads of state at the UN, met with the pope, sparred with the president of the United States and inspired 4 million people to join the global climate strike on September 20, 2019, in what was the largest climate demonstration in human history.”

She was recently at the COP25 climate talks in Madrid, where she gave a speech, criticising world leaders for “negotiating loopholes”:

“Greta Thunberg is an ordinary teenage girl who, in summoning the courage to speak truth to power, became the icon of a generation,” Time posted on its social media on Thursday

She was earlier named among TIME’s 2019 next generation leaders series, which celebrates young minds influencing the world positively.