Claudia Sheinbaum facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Claudia Sheinbaum
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Sheinbaum in 2024
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| 66th President of Mexico | |
| Assumed office 1 October 2024 |
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| Preceded by | Andrés Manuel López Obrador |
| Head of Government of Mexico City | |
| In office 5 December 2018 – 16 June 2023 |
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| Preceded by | José Ramón Amieva |
| Succeeded by | Martí Batres |
| Mayor of Tlalpan | |
| In office 1 October 2015 – 6 December 2017 |
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| Preceded by | Héctor Hugo Hernández Rodríguez |
| Succeeded by | Fernando Hernández Palacios |
| Secretary of the Environment of Mexico City | |
| In office 5 December 2000 – 15 May 2006 |
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| Head of Government | Andrés Manuel López Obrador |
| Preceded by | Alejandro Encinas Rodríguez |
| Succeeded by | Eduardo Vega López |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo
24 June 1962 Mexico City, Mexico |
| Political party | Morena (since 2014) |
| Other political affiliations |
Party of the Democratic Revolution (1989–2014) |
| Spouses |
Carlos Ímaz Gispert
(m. 1987; div. 2016)Jesús María Tarriba
(m. 2023) |
| Children | 2 |
| Parents | Carlos Sheinbaum Yoselevitz (father) Annie Pardo Cemo (mother) |
| Education | National Autonomous University of Mexico (BS, MS, PhD) |
| Signature |  |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Energy conservation, energy policy, sustainable development |
| Institutions | National Autonomous University of Mexico |
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo (born 24 June 1962) is a Mexican politician, scientist, and academic who has been the 66th president of Mexico since 1 October 2024. She is the first woman to be elected to the position. She is a member of the left-wing National Regeneration Movement (Morena).
From 2000 to 2006, Sheinbaum served as secretary of the environment under future president Andrés Manuel López Obrador during his tenure as head of government of Mexico City. She was mayor of the Tlalpan borough from 2015 to 2017 and was elected head of government of Mexico City in the 2018 election.
A scientist by profession, Sheinbaum received her Doctor of Philosophy in energy engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She has authored over 100 articles and two books on energy, the environment, and sustainable development. She contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and in 2018 was named one of the BBC's 100 Women.
In June 2023, Sheinbaum resigned from her position as head of the city government to seek Morena's presidential nomination in the 2024 election. In September 2023, she secured the party's nomination over her closest opponent, former foreign secretary Marcelo Ebrard. In June 2024, Sheinbaum won the Mexican general election in a landslide. When Sheinbaum assumes office, she will be the first female president of Mexico and the first president from a predominantly Jewish background.
Contents
Early life
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was born on 24 June 1962 to a secular Jewish family in Mexico City. Her paternal Ashkenazi grandparents emigrated from Lithuania to Mexico City in the 1920s. Her maternal Sephardic grandparents emigrated there from Sofia, Bulgaria, in the early 1940s to escape the Holocaust. She celebrated the major Jewish holidays at her grandparents' homes.
Both of her parents are scientists: her mother, Annie Pardo Cemo, is a biologist and professor emeritus at the Faculty of Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and her father, Carlos Sheinbaum Yoselevitz, was a chemical engineer. Her brother, Julio, is a physicist.
Academic career
Sheinbaum studied physics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where she earned an undergraduate degree in 1989. She earned a master's degree in 1994 and a Ph.D. in 1995 in energy engineering.
Sheinbaum completed the work for her Ph.D. thesis between 1991 and 1994 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. While working for the laboratory, she analyzed the use of energy in the Mexican transportation sector and published studies on the trends in Mexican building energy use.
In 1995, she joined the faculty at the Institute of Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She was a researcher at the Institute of Engineering and is a member of both the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores and the Mexican Academy of Sciences. In 1999, she received the prize for best UNAM young researcher in engineering and technological innovation.
In 2006, Sheinbaum returned to UNAM after a period in government and began publishing articles in scientific journals.
In 2007, she was a contributing author to the "Industry" chapter of the WG3 (Mitigation) report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4AR and in 2013, a lead author for the chapter in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.
Early political career
Sheinbaum has been reported as an active supporter of Colombian guerrilla movement M19 during her youth.
During her time as a student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Sheinbaum was a member of the Consejo Estudiantil Universitario ("University Student Council"), a group of students that would become the founding youth movement of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).
Sheinbaum served as the Secretary of the Environment of Mexico City from 5 December 2000, having been appointed on 20 November 2000 to the cabinet of the Head of Government of Mexico City, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. During her term, which concluded in May 2006, she was responsible for the construction of an electronic vehicle-registration center for Mexico City. She also oversaw the introduction of the Metrobús, a bus rapid transit system with dedicated lanes, and the construction of the second story of the Anillo Periférico, Mexico City's ring road.
López Obrador included Sheinbaum in his proposed cabinet for the Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources as part of his campaign for the 2012 presidential election. In 2014, she joined López Obrador's splinter movement, which broke away from the mainstream left-wing party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution.
Mayor of Tlalpan
From the end of 2015, Sheinbaum served as the mayor of Tlalpan. She resigned from the position in 2017 upon receiving the nomination for the candidacy of the mayor of Mexico City for the Juntos Haremos Historia (Together We Will Make History) coalition, consisting of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), the Labor Party (PT), and the Social Encounter Party (PES).
Head of Government of Mexico City (2018–2023)
On 1 July 2018, Sheinbaum was elected to a six-year term as the Head of Government of Mexico City with 47.08% of the vote, defeating six other candidates. She was inaugurated on 5 December 2018. She became the first female head of government and the first to come from a Jewish background.
Education
As part of her administration's education policy, the Mi Beca para Empezar ("My Scholarship to Start") scholarship program was created for 1.2 million students from preschool to secondary education and later elevated to constitutional law in Mexico City. The Rosario Castellanos Institute of Higher Studies and the University of Health were created. In addition, community centers called pilares ("pillars") were established in marginalized neighborhoods and towns to promote arts, sports, education, and cultural activities.
Environment
In June 2019, Sheinbaum announced a new six-year environmental plan. It includes reducing air pollution by 30%, planting 15 million trees, banning single-use plastics and promoting recycling, building a new waste separation plant, providing water service to every home, constructing 100 kilometers of corridors for the exclusive use of trolleybus lines and the Mexico City Metrobús system, and constructing and installing solar water heaters and solar panels.
Public transport
In September 2019, Sheinbaum announced a 40 billion peso (US$2 billion) investment to modernize the Mexico City Metro over the next five years, including modernization, re-strengthening, new trains, improving stations, stairways, train control and automation, user information, and payment systems. The construction of 200 kilometers of bicycle paths, six bicycle stations, 2,500 new bicycles for the Ecobici system, subsidies for public transportation, and the introduction of the Cablebús cable car system in the Iztapalapa borough have aimed to alleviate traffic congestion and improve transit.
Social issues
In 2019, Sheinbaum implemented a gender-neutral uniform policy for students in state-run schools, allowing them to wear uniforms of their choice regardless of gender. In 2021, Sheinbaum removed a statue of Christopher Columbus from Mexico City's Paseo de la Reforma as part of what she referred to as a "decolonization" exercise.
2024 presidential campaign
Nomination
On 12 June 2023, Sheinbaum announced that she would resign as head of government of Mexico City on 16 June in order to contend in the internal selection process to select a de facto presidential candidate for Juntos Hacemos Historia, a coalition encompassing Morena, the Labor Party, and the Ecologist Green Party of Mexico.
The coalition's internal process consisted of five polls conducted from 28 August to 4 September. On 6 September, Sheinbaum was declared the winner, securing 39.38% of the vote and defeating her closest opponent, former foreign secretary Marcelo Ebrard, by around 13 points. On 19 November 2023, Sheinbaum registered as the sole precandidate of Sigamos Haciendo Historia, the successor coalition to Juntos Hacemos Historia. Sheinbaum formally registered her candidacy at the National Electoral Institute (INE) on 18 February 2024.
General election
On 1 March 2024, Sheinbaum launched her campaign at the Zócalo, outlining her proposals and emphasizing her commitment to continuing President López Obrador's Fourth Transformation policies. She pledged to passing "Plan C", a package of eighteen constitutional reforms proposed by López Obrador earlier that year, which include increasing the minimum wage above inflation, elevating social programs to constitutional law, and electing members of the judiciary by popular vote. She also proposed replicating her Mexico City security strategy nationwide, introducing a constitutional amendment to prevent reelection for any popularly elected position, and implementing new social programs for students from preschool to secondary education and women aged 60 to 64.
During debates and the campaign, Sheinbaum was accused by Xóchitl Gálvez, the candidate from the opposition coalition Fuerza y Corazón por México, of being culpable of the collapse of the Colegio Rébsamen during the 2017 Puebla earthquake, the Mexico City Metro overpass collapse, and the excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico City.
Polls consistently indicated that Sheinbaum held a substantial lead over her main opponent, Xóchitl Gálvez. During the three presidential debates, many commentators praised her calm demeanor during provocations from Gálvez.
The election took place on 2 June 2024, with Sheinbaum being projected the winner by the INE's quick count at 11:50 CST, making her the virtual president-elect. On 6 June, final vote counts confirmed that Sheinbaum won in a 32-point landslide. She received the highest number of votes ever recorded for a candidate in Mexican history, carried 31 out of 32 states, and achieved the highest vote percentage since 1982.
Presidency
Inauguration
Sheinbaum is to be sworn in as president on 1 October 2024, becoming the first woman to ever hold the office. Among those attending her inauguration were Brazilian President Lula da Silva, Chilean President Gabriel Boric, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, former German President Christian Wulff and US First Lady Jill Biden.
Days prior to the event, diplomatic tensions arose between the Governments of Spain and Mexico as King Felipe VI of Spain was not invited to her inauguration. In a press release, Sheibaum cited the King's failure to respond to a letter from López Obrador in 2019, in which the latter proposed the former to recognize the grievances suffered by the first nations during the Spanish conquest in the 1500s. In response, the Spanish government said that it would boycott the event altogether.
Political views
Social issues
Sheinbaum has openly identified herself as a feminist, aligning her beliefs and actions with the principles of gender equality and women's rights.
Economy
Sheinbaum has criticized the neoliberal economic policies of past presidents of Mexico, arguing that they have contributed to inequality in the country. She has promised to expand welfare under her presidency and intends to continue programs started by López Obrador, such as universal pension.
Environment
Sheinbaum has a background in environmental policy, having served as Minister of the Environment for Mexico City and worked on the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which would go on to win a Nobel Prize. In her tenure as Minister of the Environment, she saw a marked reduction in air pollution and created community ecological reserves. She has both spoken in favor of clean energy and in support of oil, having praised PEMEX (the nation's state-owned oil company).
Personal life
In 1986, Sheinbaum met Carlos Imaz Gispert, who later became a prominent political figure in the PRD, during his tenure at Stanford University. They married in 1987 and separated in 2016. They have a daughter, born in 1988. Through the marriage, Sheinbaum became the stepmother to Ímaz's son from a previous marriage, whom she raised.
In 2016, she began dating Jesús María Tarriba Unger, a financial risk analyst for the Bank of Mexico, whom she had known at university. In November 2023, Sheinbaum announced her marriage to Tarriba via social media.
See also
In Spanish: Claudia Sheinbaum para niños
