Jo Cox was working her 'dream job' as an MP and had been tipped as a future minister
Jo Cox was barely a year into her dream job as Labour MP when she was murdered by far right fanatic Thomas Mair.
Mrs Cox, who was due to celebrate her 42nd birthday just days after she died, had already been spoken of as a future minister.
Born and brought up in the constituency where she died, Batley and Spen, she tweeted a picture of the moment of her election with the remark: "A very emotional moment - just after I was told I'd got the job I've always dreamed of."
She had already marked herself out as one of the brightest of the 2015 newcomers to the House of Commons.
Fellow Labour MP John Mann described her as "one of the stars of the new intake".
With a background in international development, Mrs Cox made her name as a tenacious and plain-speaking advocate of the war-scarred people of Syria.
Mrs Cox met her husband Brendan when they both worked in the aid sector.
Mr Cox used to work for Save The Children and then became prime minister Mr Brown's adviser on international development.
Mr and Mrs Cox had two small children - daughter Lejla, who was three when her mother died, and son Cuillin, who was five - and they all lived on a barge on the River Thames in central London.
A week before her death, she hosted a party on her houseboat for the new intake of MPs.
After leaving Heckmondwike Grammar School, Mrs Cox went to Cambridge - the first in her family to go to university - and graduated in 1995.
She worked first for Labour MP Joan Walley and helped to launch the pro-European campaigning organisation Britain In Europe before working for Baroness Kinnock for two years in Brussels.
Mrs Cox joined Oxfam in 2002, working in a range of roles including head of policy, head of humanitarian campaigning based in New York and head of the charity's European office in Brussels.
After a decade with Oxfam she went to work for Sarah Brown, wife of Gordon Brown, on an international initiative to stop mothers and babies dying in pregnancy and childbirth.
Just before standing for Parliament, she was working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and The Freedom Fund, a charity working to end the scourge of modern slavery.
Like all MPs, Mrs Cox divided her time between London and her constituency, where many members of her family - including parents Gordon and Jean Leadbeater - still live.
Mrs Cox abstained in the contentious 2015 vote on allowing British military action in Syria, insisting a more wide-ranging attempt at a solution to the conflict was needed.
She listed her parliamentary interests as foreign policy, international development, early years education and social isolation.
She also took a keen interest in the northern economy and regional devolution and was a member of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee.
In her maiden speech to Parliament, Mrs Cox said she believed "we are far more united and have far more in common with each other that things that divide us".