Claudia Sheinbaum

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo (born 24 June 1962) is a Mexican physicist, engineer, and politician serving as the 66th president of Mexico from 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2030. She is the first woman and the first person of Jewish heritage to hold the office. Previously, she served as Head of Government of Mexico City from 2018 to 2023. Sheinbaum holds a bachelor's degree in physics, a master's in energy engineering, and a PhD in the same field from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where she later became a researcher; she conducted doctoral work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her scientific career included contributions as a lead and contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's fourth and fifth assessment reports on mitigation. Entering politics with the Morena party, she advanced through roles such as delegate of Tlalpan borough and secretary of the environment in Mexico City before her mayoral tenure. Sheinbaum won the 2024 presidential election with approximately 59% of the vote, a landslide victory that extended Morena's dominance in Congress. Her presidency emphasizes continuity with predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador's agenda of social programs, infrastructure investment, and energy sovereignty, while facing challenges in security, economic growth, and judicial reforms. During her time as mayor, she oversaw urban mobility projects but encountered criticism over the 2021 partial collapse of Mexico City Metro Line 12, which resulted in 26 deaths and investigations revealing construction and maintenance deficiencies from prior administrations, though oversight lapses were also scrutinized.

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was born on June 24, 1962, in Mexico City to a secular Jewish family of Eastern European descent. Her father, Carlos Sheinbaum Yoselevitz (1933–2017), was a chemical engineer whose parents were Ashkenazi Jews who had emigrated from Lithuania in the 1920s. Her mother, Annie Pardo Cemo, is a biologist whose family fled Bulgaria in 1940 amid rising antisemitism, with Pardo herself born in Mexico the following year. Sheinbaum is the second of three children, including an older brother, Julio, a physicist.

Raised in a secular household by parents of Ashkenazi Jewish descent—her father from Bulgarian Jewish lineage and mother from Lithuanian Jewish roots—Sheinbaum identifies as non-religious but acknowledges cultural influences, including family observance of Jewish holidays like Hanukkah without formal religious adherence. She has consistently kept details of her private life out of public view, rarely discussing personal matters in interviews or campaigns.