Claudia Sheinbaum — president (current) with roots in the Russian Empire
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was born in Mexico City on 24 June 1962, the second child of Carlos Sheinbaum Yoselevitz (1933–2023), a chemist, and Annie Pardo Cemo, a biologist. Both her parents were born in Mexico, and she grew up in a secular household, celebrating the Jewish holidays at her grandparents' homes. Her connection to the Russian Empire runs through her father's parents.
In a speech to a Jewish women's gathering in 2018, she said that both her surnames were of Jewish origin: her paternal grandparents had emigrated from Lithuania, and her maternal grandparents were Sephardi Jews from Bulgaria. In a later account she dated her grandmother's arrival in Mexico, with part of her family, to the second decade of the twentieth century, and her grandfather's to around the same time; he was, she said, both Jewish and a communist. Other accounts place the paternal grandparents' arrival in the 1920s, and biographical summaries name her grandfather as Chone (Juan) Sheinbaum Abramovitz, a jeweller who emigrated in 1928. If they left in the 1910s, they left the Russian Empire; if in the 1920s, independent Lithuania, and whether they were born under the Empire depends on birth years that have not been published. Her mother's parents came from Sofia in the early 1940s, fleeing, as she put it, Nazi persecution.
Sheinbaum earned a doctorate in energy engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and made her career as an environmental scientist and academic. In the early 2000s she served as Secretary of the Environment in the government of Mexico City.
In 2018 she was elected Head of Government of Mexico City, the first woman elected to the post, and served until 2023. In June 2024 she was elected President of Mexico and took office on 1 October 2024, becoming the first woman, and the first person of Jewish heritage, to hold the presidency. During the campaign she published her birth certificate in response to claims that she had not been born in Mexico.
She has described herself as not religiously observant and has spoken of her pride in her family's origins.
Tracing the roots — Lithuania — paternal grandparents (towns not published; departure dated to the 1910s by her, the 1920s by others)
Her paternal grandparents were Lithuanian Jews. In her own account her grandmother reached Mexico in the second decade of the twentieth century, when Lithuania was still in the Russian Empire, and her grandfather around the same time; other accounts place their arrival in the 1920s. Her maternal grandparents were Sephardi Jews from Sofia.
Her father's parents were Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from Lithuania (Russian Empire) in the 1920s.
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Lithuania — paternal grandparents (towns not published; departure dated to the 1910s by her, the 1920s by others). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"Mexico's strength has always come from its diversity."