Malala defied the Taliban as a young girl in Pakistan and demanded that girls be allowed to receive an education. She wrote a blog under the name Gul Makai in agreement with BBC who needed someone to write about how ordinary people lived under the Taliban. For her activism, she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in 2012, but survived and has continued her struggle and become a leading advocate of girls’ rights.

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In 2014, she was the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Kailash Satyarthi of India. Aged 17 at the time, this made her the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. Malala Yousafzai’s book, “I Am Malala,” became an international bestseller.