Huma Abedin

Huma Mahmood Abedin (born July 28, 1975) is an American political staffer who was vice chair of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign for President of the United States.

Abedin was born on July 28, 1975, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to two professors.

Abedin is of Indian and Pakistani descent.

She has a sister and a brother.

When Abedin was two years old, her parents were offered jobs at the University of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

Abedin moved with her family to Jeddah where she was raised and lived until returning to the United States for college.

Abedin traveled frequently during her childhood and teenage years, and attended a British girls' school.

Her father died from progressive renal failure when she was 17.

As a teenager, she aspired to be a journalist like her role model Christiane Amanpour and wanted to work in the White House press office.

At George Washington University, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree as a journalism major with a minor in political science.

While a student at George Washington University, Abedin began working as an intern in the White House in 1996, assigned to then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.

From 1996 to 2008, she was an assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs.

For several years, she served as the back-up to Clinton's personal aide.

She officially took over as Clinton's aide and personal advisor during Clinton's successful 2000 U.S. Senate campaign in New York and later worked as traveling chief of staff and "body woman" during Clinton's unsuccessful campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

According to a number of Clinton associates, Abedin is a trusted advisor to Clinton, particularly on the Middle East, and has become known for that expertise.

In the memoir, Abedin wrote that in the mid-2000s, an unnamed U.S. senator had "kissed me, pushing his tongue into my mouth, pressing me back on the sofa"; she wrote that she had "buried" the incident until accusations of sexual assault against Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 triggered her memory.

In an interview with CBS News Sunday Morning to promote the book, she said she did not feel that the senator was sexually assaulting her in that moment.

Abedin appeared on the podcast, The Literary City with Ramjee Chandran, to discuss her memoir.

She says the title of the book best describes the plurality she feels in her daily life and her career.

She was also the traveling chief of staff and former assistant to Clinton during her 2008 presidential campaign for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential election.

During Hillary Clinton's tenure at the State Department and her presidential campaign, Abedin became one of Clinton's closest aides.

Her high-profile political career has caused her personal life to come under public scrutiny over the years, particularly her marriage to former congressman Anthony Weiner.

Before that, Abedin was deputy chief of staff to Clinton when she was U.S. Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013.

In 2009, Abedin was appointed deputy chief of staff to Clinton in the State Department.

After returning from maternity leave in June 2012, she left her position as Clinton's deputy chief of staff and became a special Government employee, a consultant role; this status allowed Abedin to work for private clients as a consultant while also serving as an adviser to the Secretary of State.

Under this arrangement, she did consultant work for Teneo, a strategic consulting firm whose clients included Coca-Cola and MF Global, and served as a paid consultant to the Clinton Foundation, while continuing her role as body woman to Clinton.

She failed to disclose her consulting work done while a State Department aide.

The New York Times reported that an associate of Abedin's said the arrangement also allowed her to work from her home in New York City rather than at the State Department's headquarters in Washington to be able to spend more time with her child and husband.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, raised questions about Abedin's work as a State Department employee, concerning the fact that she held four jobs from June 2012 to February 2013.

These included serving as a part-time aide to Clinton at the State Department while also working as a consultant to private clients for the consulting firm Teneo Holdings, a consulting firm run by Douglas Band, a longtime aide to former president Bill Clinton.

At the time, she was also being paid a salary for work at the Clinton Foundation, and working as Hillary Clinton's personal assistant.

After leaving her post at the State Department in 2013, Abedin served as director of the transition team that helped Clinton return to private life, and continued her work for the Clinton Foundation.

Eleven days before leaving the State Department, Abedin set up a private consulting firm, Zain Endeavors LLC.

Starting in 2015, Abedin served as vice-chairperson for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign for president, while continuing to serve as personal assistant to Clinton.

In her role as the campaign's vice-chairperson, she screened and interviewed applicants for key campaign roles, including campaign manager Robby Mook, and was the primary channel for communications with Clinton before the campaign officially began.

After Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump proposed banning Muslims from entering the United States, Abedin wrote an email to Clinton supporters calling herself "a proud Muslim" and criticized Trump's plan as "literally (writing) racism into our law books".

Abedin wrote a memoir titled Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds, published in November 2021.

The book covers her childhood in Saudi Arabia, her Muslim faith, her time as an aide to Clinton and her relationship with her estranged husband, former Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner.

She has said that writing the book was a therapeutic process, helping her work through a tumultuous time as a result of Weiner's multiple scandals.

In the memoir, Abedin also explores the multiple identities that have shaped her, in particular being born in Michigan and then raised in Saudi Arabia by a Pakistani father and an Indian mother.