Cindy McCain

Cindy Lou McCain (Hensley; born May 20, 1954) is an American diplomat, businesswoman, and humanitarian who is the executive director of the World Food Programme.

McCain previously served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture from 2021 to 2023.

Cindy Hensley was named Junior Rodeo Queen of Arizona in 1968.

She went to Central High School in Phoenix, where she was named Best Dressed as a senior and graduated in 1972.

Hensley enrolled at the University of Southern California.

She joined Kappa Alpha Theta sorority as a freshman, and had many leadership roles in the house during her four years there.

Hensley graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in education in 1976.

She continued on at USC, and received a Master of Arts degree in special education in 1978.

There she participated in a movement therapy pilot program that led the way to a standard treatment for children with severe disabilities; she published the work Movement Therapy: A Possible Approach in 1978.

Declining a role in the family business, she worked for a year as a special education teacher of children with Down syndrome and other disabilities at Agua Fria High School in Avondale, Arizona.

Hensley met John McCain in April 1979 at a military reception in Honolulu, Hawaii.

He was the U.S. Navy liaison officer to the United States Senate, and was accompanying a group of senators heading for China.

She was in Hawaii on a family vacation with her parents.

Hensley was talking to Jill Biden, the wife of Senator Joe Biden, who suggested that she talk to McCain; her father made the introduction.

He was almost 18 years her senior; by her later description, each fudged the age they said they were to the other: "He made himself younger, and I made myself older, of course."

He had been married to Carol McCain for 14 years and they had three children (two of whom he adopted from her first marriage).

McCain and Hensley quickly began a relationship, traveling between Arizona and Washington to see each other.

She married John McCain in 1980, and the couple moved to Arizona in 1981, where her husband was elected to the United States Congress the following year and reelected five more times.

The couple had three children together, in addition to adopting another.

John McCain then pushed to end his marriage and the couple stopped cohabiting in January 1980, Carol McCain consented to a divorce in February 1980, it was finalized in April 1980.

Hensley and McCain were married on May 17, 1980, at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix.

They signed a prenuptial agreement that kept most of her family's assets under her name; they kept their finances apart and filed separate income tax returns.

Her father's business and political contacts helped her new husband to gain a foothold in Arizona politics.

From 1988 to 1995, she founded and operated a nonprofit organization, the American Voluntary Medical Team, which organized trips by medical personnel to disaster-stricken or war-torn third-world areas.

Upon her father's death in 2000, she inherited majority control and became chair of Hensley & Co., one of the largest Anheuser-Busch beer distributors in the United States.

She is the widow of U.S. Senator John McCain from Arizona, who was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee.

McCain was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and is a daughter of wealthy beer distributor Jim Hensley.

After receiving bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Southern California, she became a special education teacher.

She participated in both of her husband's presidential campaigns and, in 2008, drew both positive and negative scrutiny for her appearance, demeanor, wealth, spending habits, and financial obligations.

She continued to be an active philanthropist and served on the boards of Operation Smile, Eastern Congo Initiative, CARE, and HALO Trust, frequently making overseas trips in conjunction with their activities.

Dixie Lea Burd (d. 2008), daughter of Marguerite Smith through a prior relationship, was her half-sister, as was Kathleen Hensley Portalski (d. 2017), daughter of Jim Hensley and his first wife, Mary Jeanne Parks.

During the 2010s, she became prominent in the fight against human trafficking.

From 2017 until his death the following year, she dealt with her husband's battle against glioblastoma.

McCain has remained visible in public life since then.

While herself a Republican, she made a cross-party endorsement of Joe Biden in the 2020 United States presidential election.

She was nominated to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture ambassadorship by President Biden in June 2021 and confirmed by the Senate in October 2021.

Much of her tenure in that position focused on dealing with the 2022–2023 food crises largely caused by the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the effects of climate change on agriculture.

Cindy Lou Hensley was born in Phoenix, Arizona, to James Hensley, who founded Hensley & Co., and Marguerite "Smitty" Hensley (née Johnson).

She has described her mother as being very much from Southern culture, while her father reflected the Western lifestyle.

She was raised as the only child of her parents' second marriages and grew up on Phoenix's North Central Avenue in affluent circumstances.