Five years after being elected to Holyrood, Kezia Dugdale is leading her party in an election campaign for the first time.
At the age of 34, the task of reviving Scottish Labour's ailing fortunes is a tough one.
But Ms Dugdale insisted that while she cannot do anything about her age, morale amongst party members is "really, really good".
She said: "We're really united in Scotland, everybody is behind me with one clear purpose and that is to renew our party's values and what we stand for."
Ms Dugdale was born in Aberdeen and studied law at the city's university, before heading to Edinburgh University where she did a masters in public policy.
She worked in a variety of jobs, including in pubs, cafes and at a call centre, before being taken on as a welfare officer at Edinburgh University Students' Association.
She went on to work for Labour's Lord Foulkes as office manager and policy adviser when he was an MSP for the Lothian region, and in the run up to the 2011 election she was a campaign organiser for Labour.
While the SNP won a majority in the Scottish Parliament that year, Ms Dugdale became an "accidental" MSP after Labour lost out in a number of constituency seats in the Lothian region, with Ms Dugdale then elected via the regional list system.
She recalled: "My job was to get the candidate for Edinburgh Eastern and the candidate for Edinburgh Central elected, and then the day after the election I was going to be made redundant from my job, I was going to have a wee redundancy package, I was going to go off and work out what I was going to do with the rest of my life.
"Both my candidates lost and I got elected, that wasn't supposed to happen that day, it was supposed to be a Labour government, it wasn't supposed to be the day I became a politician."
But she stressed: "I find it nothing but an honour and a privilege to do what I do. I wake up feeling lucky every single day."
Ms Dugdale said she is "very proud to be where I am", and is "very focused on the job" in the run up to May 5.
"I think and believe I'm doing a good job," she said. "I'm turning around the Labour Party. I'm taking decisions every day that will ensure the party's long-term future."
While she rarely speaks about her personal life, Ms Dugdale recently revealed she has a female partner.
"I don't talk about it very much because I don't feel I need to," she told the Fabian Society.
''I am generally calm, almost serene. I don't get easily stressed or battered. But I need a bit of stability to do that, and that means my private life is my private life. That's the thing I just have to have that nobody gets to touch, and that gives me the strength to be calm elsewhere.''
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