Claudia Sheinbaum

Claudia Sheinbaum
Born	Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo 24 6, 1962
Birthplace	Mexico City, Mexico
Nationality	Mexican
Occupation	Template:Hlist
Title	66th President of Mexico
Known for	First woman and first Jewish person to serve as President of Mexico
Education	National Autonomous University of Mexico (BS, MS, PhD)
Children	2
Awards	BBC 100 Women (2018)

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo (born 24 June 1962) is a Mexican politician, energy engineer, and climate scientist who has served as the 66th President of Mexico since 1 October 2024. She is the first woman and the first person of Jewish heritage to hold the Mexican presidency. A member of the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), she previously served as Head of Government of Mexico City from 2018 to 2023, as Mayor of Tlalpan from 2015 to 2017, and as Secretary of the Environment of the Federal District from 2000 to 2006. A scientist by training, Sheinbaum holds a doctorate in energy engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and has co-authored over 100 academic articles and two books on energy, the environment, and sustainable development. She contributed to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and was named one of BBC 100 Women in 2018. In the 2024 Mexican general election, she defeated opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez by a wide margin to win the presidency.

Early Life

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was born on 24 June 1962 in Mexico City. She comes from a family with both scientific and Jewish heritage. Her father, Carlos Sheinbaum, was a chemical engineer, and her mother, Annie Pardo Cemo, is a biologist. Both parents were of Ashkenazi Jewish descent; her paternal grandparents emigrated from Lithuania to Mexico, while her maternal family had roots in Bulgaria.

Sheinbaum grew up in an intellectually oriented household. Her parents were involved in academia and the sciences, and the family placed a strong emphasis on education and social engagement. Her upbringing in Mexico City exposed her to the capital's complex urban, environmental, and social challenges — issues that would later define both her academic research and her political career.

From an early age, Sheinbaum showed interest in both science and social justice. She came of age during a period of significant political ferment in Mexico, and her family background contributed to a perspective that combined scientific inquiry with concern for public welfare. Her Jewish identity, while not a defining feature of her political platform, has been noted as historically significant given her later rise to the presidency. The Jerusalem Post included Sheinbaum in its list of the 50 most influential Jewish people in 2018, reflecting the significance of her election as Head of Government of Mexico City.

Education

Sheinbaum pursued her entire higher education at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), one of Latin America's most prominent research universities. She earned a bachelor's degree in physics, followed by a master's degree and a doctorate (PhD) in energy engineering, all from UNAM.

Her doctoral research focused on energy conservation, energy policy, and sustainable development — fields in which she subsequently built a significant academic career. In addition to her studies at UNAM, Sheinbaum conducted research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the United States, where she worked on energy-related projects. This experience at Berkeley provided her with an international research perspective and connections to the global scientific community working on climate and energy issues.

Career

Academic and Scientific Career

Before entering full-time politics, Sheinbaum established herself as a researcher and academic at UNAM, where she worked in the field of energy engineering. Her scholarly output includes more than 100 articles published in academic journals and two books addressing energy, the environment, and sustainable development. Her primary areas of expertise encompassed energy conservation, energy policy, and sustainable development.

Sheinbaum's scientific credentials extended to the international stage. She was a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body responsible for assessing the science related to climate change. The IPCC shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, and while Sheinbaum was not a direct Nobel laureate, her participation in the IPCC's work placed her among a community of scientists whose collective research informed global climate policy. Her research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory further enhanced her international scientific profile.

This academic background in energy and environmental science distinguished Sheinbaum from many of her contemporaries in Mexican politics and informed her later policy positions on environmental governance and urban sustainability.

Early Political Career and the PRD

Sheinbaum entered partisan politics in 1989, when she joined the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), a center-left political party that served as the primary opposition to the long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Her political career became closely associated with that of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who emerged as one of Mexico's most prominent political figures in the early 2000s.

When López Obrador served as Head of Government of Mexico City from 2000 to 2005, he appointed Sheinbaum as Secretary of the Environment of the Federal District. She held this position from 5 December 2000 to 15 May 2006, overseeing environmental policy for one of the world's largest metropolitan areas. In this role, she applied her scientific expertise in energy and sustainability to the governance of Mexico City's environmental challenges, which included air quality, waste management, and urban green space.

Transition to Morena

In 2014, Sheinbaum left the PRD to join the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), a new political party founded by López Obrador. The split reflected a broader fracturing within the Mexican left, as López Obrador and his supporters moved away from the PRD amid disagreements over the party's direction and alliances.

Following her transition to Morena, Sheinbaum ran for and won the position of Mayor of Tlalpan, one of the 16 boroughs (alcaldías) of Mexico City, in 2015. She served as Mayor of Tlalpan from 1 October 2015 to 6 December 2017, succeeding Héctor Hugo Hernández Rodríguez. The role gave Sheinbaum her first experience of local executive governance and served as a stepping stone to her bid for the Head of Government of Mexico City.

Head of Government of Mexico City (2018–2023)

In 2018, Sheinbaum was elected Head of Government of Mexico City, becoming the first woman to be elected to that position. Her election was also notable because she was the first person of Jewish heritage to lead the Mexican capital. She took office on 5 December 2018, succeeding José Ramón Amieva.

During her tenure as Head of Government, Sheinbaum focused on several key policy areas, including public security, public transportation, and the expansion of social programs. Her administration confronted significant challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, which severely affected Mexico City beginning in early 2020, and the Mexico City Metro overpass collapse of May 2021, in which a section of elevated track on Line 12 of the Metro collapsed, killing 26 people and injuring dozens more.

On the issue of public safety, data reported by The Guardian indicated that Mexico City's murder rate dropped during Sheinbaum's administration, though the number of disappeared persons continued to rise. This mixed record on security reflected the broader complexities of governance in one of the world's most populous metropolitan areas.

Sheinbaum resigned as Head of Government on 16 June 2023 in order to pursue her candidacy for the presidency. She was succeeded by Martí Batres.

2024 Presidential Campaign and Election

After resigning from the Head of Government position, Sheinbaum entered the Morena party's internal selection process for its presidential candidate. She competed against Marcelo Ebrard, who had served as Mexico's Secretary of Foreign Affairs under President López Obrador, among other contenders. Sheinbaum won the party's nomination.

In the 2024 Mexican general election, held on 2 June 2024, Sheinbaum faced Xóchitl Gálvez, the candidate of the opposition coalition, as her principal rival. Sheinbaum won the election by a substantial margin, securing a mandate to continue and expand upon many of the policies initiated during López Obrador's presidency. The result confirmed Morena's dominant position in Mexican politics and represented a historic milestone as the first election of a woman to the Mexican presidency.

Presidency (2024–present)

Claudia Sheinbaum was inaugurated as the 66th President of Mexico on 1 October 2024. Her administration has benefited from a legislative supermajority held by Morena and its allied parties in the Mexican Congress, enabling the passage of a series of constitutional reforms.

Among the reforms enacted during the early phase of her presidency were measures to enshrine social programs into the Constitution of Mexico, thereby making them constitutional rights rather than discretionary government expenditures. Her administration also reversed key aspects of the 2013 energy reform that had opened Mexico's energy sector to greater private and foreign participation, instead strengthening state control over the sector through entities such as Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission. Additionally, her government mandated that increases in the minimum wage must exceed the rate of inflation, a provision aimed at ensuring real wage growth for Mexican workers.

These constitutional changes reflected a continuation and deepening of the political project initiated by López Obrador, often referred to as the "Fourth Transformation of Mexico." Sheinbaum's presidency has thus been characterized by both continuity with the preceding administration and the assertion of her own policy priorities, informed by her background in energy science and urban governance.

Personal Life

Sheinbaum was married to Carlos Ímaz Gispert, a Mexican politician, from 1987 until their divorce in 2016. She has two children.

Sheinbaum's Jewish heritage has been widely noted in the context of her political career. Her paternal grandparents immigrated to Mexico from Lithuania, and her maternal family came from Bulgaria; both sides of the family were of Ashkenazi Jewish background. While Sheinbaum has not made her religious identity a central component of her public political persona, her election as Head of Government of Mexico City in 2018 was covered internationally as a milestone for Jewish representation in Latin American politics.

As president, Sheinbaum resides at the National Palace in Mexico City.

Recognition

Sheinbaum has received recognition both for her scientific contributions and for her political achievements. In 2018, she was included in the BBC 100 Women list, which highlights influential and inspiring women from around the world. That same year, the Jerusalem Post named her among its 50 most influential Jewish people, citing her election as the first Jewish woman to lead Mexico City.

Her election as Head of Government of Mexico City in 2018 was itself a milestone recognized in international media, as she became the first woman elected to the post. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory acknowledged her achievement as that of a former researcher who had moved into high-level governance. The Daily Californian similarly noted her Berkeley Lab background in its coverage of her election.

Her academic work has been documented in major citation databases, including Google Scholar, Scopus, and ORCID, reflecting a substantial record of peer-reviewed research in energy engineering and sustainability.

In 2025, Forbes ranked Sheinbaum as the fifth most powerful woman in the world, a reflection of her position as the leader of Latin America's second-largest economy and the historical significance of her presidency.

Legacy

Claudia Sheinbaum's presidency represents several historic firsts in Mexican politics. She is the first woman to serve as President of Mexico, breaking a barrier in a country where the presidency had been held exclusively by men for nearly two centuries since independence. She is also the first person of Jewish heritage to hold the office.

Her career trajectory — from research scientist at UNAM and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to the highest political office in Mexico — is distinctive in the context of Latin American politics, where academic scientists have rarely ascended to the presidency. Her background in energy engineering and climate science has informed policy positions on environmental and energy issues that distinguish her administration's approach from those of predecessors who lacked comparable technical expertise.

As Head of Government of Mexico City, Sheinbaum demonstrated that a woman could lead one of the world's largest cities, managing complex crises including a pandemic and a major infrastructure disaster. The reduction in the murder rate during her tenure, as documented by The Guardian, was cited as an achievement, though the concurrent rise in disappearances tempered the narrative of security improvements.

Her presidency is closely linked to the broader political movement led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the Morena party. The constitutional reforms enacted under her administration — including the entrenchment of social programs as constitutional rights and the reassertion of state control over the energy sector — represent a consolidation of the political and economic direction set during the previous administration. The long-term impact of these reforms on Mexico's economic development, energy policy, and social welfare will be a defining measure of her legacy.