Claudia Sheinbaum


Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo is a Mexican scientist, politician, and Mayor of Mexico City. She jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 as a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She was elected Mayor of Mexico City on 1 July 2018 as part of the Juntos Haremos Historia coalition. She is the first woman and the first Jewish person to be elected Mayor of Mexico City.
Sheinbaum has a Ph.D. in energy engineering, and is the author of over 100 articles and two books on the topics of energy, the environment, and sustainable development. She served as the Secretary of the Environment of Mexico City from 2000 to 2006 during Andrés Manuel López Obrador's term as mayor, and she was the Mayor of Tlalpan from 2015 to 2017. In 2018, she was listed as one of BBC's 100 Women.

Early life

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was born to a secular Jewish family in Mexico City. Her grandparents emigrated to Mexico City from Lithuania and Sofia, Bulgaria, and she celebrated all the Jewish holidays at their homes. Both of her parents are scientists; her father, chemical engineer Carlos Sheinbaum Yoselevitz, and her mother, Annie Pardo Cemo, a biologist, now professor emeritus of the Faculty of Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Her brother is a physicist.

Academic career

Sheinbaum studied physics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where she earned an undergraduate degree, followed by a master's and a Ph.D in energy engineering. She completed the work for her doctoral thesis in four years at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, where she analyzed the use of energy in Mexico’s transportation, published studies on the trends of Mexican building energy use, and obtained a Ph.D. in energy engineering and physics.
In 1995 she joined the faculty at UNAM's Institute of Engineering. 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 of best UNAM young researcher in engineering and technological innovation.
In 2006 Sheinbaum returned to UNAM, after a period in government, publishing articles in scientific journals.
In 2007, she joined the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at the United Nations in the field of energy and industry, as an author on the topic "Mitigation of climate change" for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. The group won the Nobel Peace Prize that year. In 2013, she authored the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report alongside 11 other experts in the field of industry.

Political career

During her time as a student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, she was a member of the Consejo Estudantil Universitario, a group of students that would become the founding youth movement of the Mexican Party of the Democratic Revolution.
meets with Claudia Sheinbaum,
at the Cibeles Palace.
She was 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 Metrobus, a rapid transit bus 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 Mexican general election. In 2014 she broke away with Lopez Obrador's splinter movement from the mainstream Mexican left-wing party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution. She served as Secretary of the Environment in 2015.

Mayor of Tlalpan

From the end of 2015, Sheinbaum served as the Mayor of Tlalpan. She resigned from the position upon receiving the nomination for candidacy of the mayor of Mexico City for the Juntos Haremos Historia '' coalition, consisting of the National Regeneration Movement, the Labor Party, and the Social Encounter Party.

Mayor of Mexico City

On 1 July 2018, Sheinbaum was elected to a six-year term as Mayor of Mexico City, defeating six other candidates. During the campaign Sheinbaum was accused by the PAN of the 2017 collapse in a 7.1 level earthquake of an elementary school that killed 19 children. She became both Mexico City's first elected female mayor, and its first Jewish mayor.
In June 2019, she 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 Cablebús lines and the Mexico City Metrobús system, and constructing and installing solar water heaters and solar panels.
In September 2019, Sheinbaum announced a 40 billion peso 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.

Personal life

In 1986 she met politician Carlos Ímaz Gispert, to whom she was married from 1987 to 2016. She has one daughter from this marriage, and also became stepmother to Rodrigo Ímaz Alarcón.Ángel Álvarez.

Abridged academic bibliography

Sheinbaum is the author of over 100 articles and two books on the topics of energy, the environment, and sustainable development. A selection follows:
  1. Consumo de energía y emisiones de CO2 del autotransporte en México y Escenarios de Mitigación, Ávila-Solís JC, Sheinbaum-Pardo C. 2016.
  2. Decomposition analysis from demand services to material production: The case of CO2 emissions from steel produced for automobiles in Mexico, Applied Energy, 174: 245-255, Sheinbaum-Pardo C. 2016.
  3. The impact of energy efficiency standards on residential electricity consumption in Mexico, Energy for Sustainable Development, 32:50-61 Martínez-Montejo S.A., Sheinbaum-Pardo C. 2016.
  4. Science and Technology in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals, World Journal of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, 14:2 - 17. Imaz M. Sheinbaum C. 2017.
  5. Assessing the Impacts of Final Demand on CO2-eq Emissions in the Mexican Economy: An Input-Output Analysis, Energy and Power Engineering, 9:40-54, Chatellier D, Sheinbaum C. 2017.
  6. Electricity sector reforms in four Latin-American countries and their impact on carbon dioxide emissions and renewable energy, Ruíz- Mendoza BJ, Sheinbaum-Pardo C. Energy Policy, 2010
  7. Energy consumption and related CO2 emissions in five Latin American countries: Changes from 1990 to 2006 and perspectives, Sheinbaum C, Ruíz BJ, Ozawa L. Energy, 2010.
  8. Mitigating Carbon Emissions while Advancing National Development Priorities: The Case of Mexico, C Sheinbaum, O Masera, Climatic Change, Springer, 2000.
  9. Energy use and CO2 emissions for Mexico’s cement industry, C Sheinbaum, L Ozawa, Energy, Elsevier, 1998.
  10. Energy use and CO2 emissions in Mexico's iron and steel industry, L Ozawa, C Sheinbaum, N Martin, E Worrell, L Price, Energy, Elsevier, 2002.
  11. New trends in industrial energy efficiency in the Mexico iron and steel industry, L Ozawa, N Martin, E Worrell, L Price, C Sheinbaum, OSTI, 1999.
  12. Mexican Electric end-use Efficiency: Experiences to Date, R Friedmann, C Sheinbaum, Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, 1998.
  13. Incorporating Sustainable Development Concerns into Climate Change Mitigation: A Case Study, OR Masera, C Sheinbaum, Climate Change and Development, UDLAP, 2000.