A lifelong resident of East Belfast, Naomi Long MEP grew up just off Mersey Street, was educated at Mersey Street Primary and Bloomfield Collegiate, before going on to study civil engineering at Queen's University. Following graduation, Naomi worked for almost 10 years in the engineering industry in Northern Ireland.
Naomi has been politically active since her early twenties and first joined Belfast City Council as an Alliance Party councillor in 2001. Naomi was subsequently elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly as MLA for East Belfast in 2003. She also had the honour of serving as Lord Mayor of Belfast from 2009 to 2010, before becoming the first Alliance MP to sit in Westminster after being elected Member of Parliament for East Belfast in May 2010.
In May 2016, Naomi returned to the Northern Ireland Assembly as MLA for East Belfast, before becoming Leader of Alliance that October. Since then, she has presided over two of the most successful elections in Alliance’s history, with the most recent local government election seeing the party substantially increase its standing across Northern Ireland, and the 2019 European poll seeing her elected as Alliance’s first MEP.