Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was elected President of Mexico on June 2, 2024. She assumed office on October 1, 2024, making her the first woman president of Mexico, and the first president from a Jewish background.  

Sheinbaum was born on June 24, 1962, to a Jewish family in Mexico City. Her grandparents were immigrants from Lithuania and Bulgaria. Growing up, Sheinbaum celebrated Jewish holidays at their homes. She studied energy engineering, earning a Master's degree at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a PhD at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California. She then joined the faculty of engineering at UNAM and later served on a United Nations Climate Change Panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which went on to win a Nobel Prize. 

Sheinbaum served as the Secretary of the Environment of Mexico City between 2000 and 2006, launching her career in politics. In 2014, she joined Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s new National Regeneration Movement party (Morena), a leftist populist political party. From 2015 to 2017, she was the president of the Tlalpan neighborhood in Mexico City. In 2018, she was elected Mayor of Mexico City, making her the first woman and first Jewish mayor of the city. She resigned from the position in 2023 in order to run for President in 2024 and was elected on June 2, 2024.  Sheinbaum is a self-described feminist, advocating for the right to abortion and LGBT rights. Sheinbaum's election exemplifies the changing face of politics worldwide. Her election as a Jewish woman reflects the expansion of the political landscape to new identities, especially considering the predominance of Catholicism in her country.  

Sources: 

“Claudia Sheinbaum.” Wikipedia, August 13, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_Sheinbaum#Head_of_Government_of_Mexico_City_(2018%E2%80%93202.    

"Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo elected as Mexico City’s first female mayor." Jewish Women’s Archive. Accessed August 13, 2024. https://jwa.org:443/thisweek/jul/01/2018/claudia-sheinbaum-pardo-elected-mexico-citys-first-female-mayor.