Juliana Awada

She is the first woman in this role to have received the distinction of the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic in 70 years and the second in history after Eva Perón in 1947.

When she returned to Argentina, she was actively involved in the family business, a textile company set up by her father in the 1960s.

María Juliana Awada (born 3 April 1974) is an Argentine businesswoman who served as the first lady of Argentina from 2015 to 2019.

Awada was born in Villa Ballester on 3 April 1974, the daughter of Ibrahim Awada, a Lebanese Muslim immigrant from the city of Baalbek, and Elsa Esther, a Syrian Christian.

She is the sister of entrepreneurs Zoraida and Daniel Awada, artist Leila Awada, and actor Alejandro Awada.

During her childhood and adolescence, she repeatedly traveled with her mother to Europe and the United States, mainly to Paris, London and New York, looking for fashion collections.

After completing her secondary education at the now defunct Chester College, a bilingual English school in Belgrano, she continued studying in Oxford, England.

In 1997, she married Gustavo Capello, whom she would divorce one year later.

Later, she was in a relationship with Belgian businessman Bruno Laurent Barbier, whom she had met on an Air France flight.

They lived together for almost ten years.

They did not marry, and had a daughter named Valentina.

Given the passivity of the Federal Court in response to the complaint, in March 2008 a report was filmed, together with teams from América TV, on various clandestine workshops in the city of San Martín, near Buenos Aires, that worked for major brands, including Awada.

These investigations were broadcast on the air on March 12, 2008.

On May 14, 2008, a list of 30 workshops that worked for major brands were denounced before the Deputy Minister of Labor Gastón Guarracino, which included the two Awada workshops in Villa Ballester that had already been denounced and filmed in 2006 and 2008.

Most of these accusations fell moot after Awada became Mauricio Macri's wife, who was Buenos Aires head of government at the time and later became president of Argentina.

Awada and Mauricio Macri began a relationship in 2009.

They wed on 16 November 2010 and have one daughter, Antonia, born in 2011.

Juliana Awada, as a textile businesswoman, was involved in a human trafficking scandal in 2010.

Her companies Awada and Cheeky allegedly bought their clothes from illegal factories where slave labour was commonly used.

The first complaint was made by the organization La Alameda against the firm Awada, accusing it of violating immigration law (art 117 to 121) and the home work law (art 4, 35 and 36) in the workshops where they made their garments and for which she is jointly responsible, and was carried out on October 18 before the Federal Prosecutor's Office of Patricio Evers and subsequently fell into another lawsuit that at that time was administered by Dr. Oyarbide.

In an interview with La Nación newspaper in 2012, she stated that her father is a liberal Muslim who did not object to one of Juliana's sisters marrying a Christian and the other a Jew.

Awada played an important role during the campaign of her husband, Mauricio Macri, in the presidential elections.

At first with an extremely low profile, Juliana always differed from the other wives of the presidential candidates, who had been much more prominent in the campaigns of their husbands.

But the campaign advisers sought to turn their profile and make it much more visible for the campaign.

She joined the campaign of Maria Eugenia Vidal in the Province of Buenos Aires in a tour of the party of José C. Paz, where they visited the Zonal Hospital of Agudos Governor Domingo Mercante, and talked with neighbors and merchants in Plaza Manuel Belgrano of that locality.

Awada was concerned about the hospital's building situation.

She was present during the presidential debate that took place in the Law College of the University of Buenos Aires, between her husband Mauricio Macri against the candidate Daniel Scioli.

After the debate, the wives of both candidates came onstage to accompany their husbands, and Awada and Macri had an intense kiss that was later replicated by the media in Argentina.

In the 2015 presidential elections held on 25 October, Mauricio Macri, candidate of the alliance Cambiemos (Let's Change), formed by the Republican Proposal, the Radical Civic Union and the Civic Coalition ARI, came second with 34.33% of the vote, while the candidate of the Front for Victory, Daniel Scioli, it outstripped by little difference.

In a historic ballotage, the first to be held in Argentina, Mauricio Macri won with 51.34% of the votes, becoming the successor of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, and Awada consequently, in the First Lady of Argentina.

On 10 December 2015, Awada accompanied her husband during his inauguration as President.

The ceremony starting from their apartment in the neighborhood of Recoleta at the corner of Avenida del Libertador and Cavia at 11:00am to the National Congress of Argentina where Macri delivered a speech of 27 minutes.

Later they went to the Casa Rosada, where Macri received the presidential attributes in the White Hall of the Casa Rosada.

After being anointed President, she and her husband gave a reception at the San Martín Palace of Argentina Foreign Ministry to all the heads of state present: Michelle Bachelet from Chile, Horacio Cartes from Paraguay, Juan Manuel Santos from Colombia, Rafael Correa from Ecuador, Evo Morales from Bolivia, Dilma Rousseff from Brazil, and representatives of other countries attending the inauguration.

Buenos Aires Governor María Eugenia Vidal confirmed that the First Lady is her personal advisor regarding her wardrobe.

Awada and President Mauricio Macri alongside her daughters Antonia and Valentina lives in the Presidential Residence of Quinta de Olivos.

In 2016, she was chosen as the most elegant First Lady in the world by ¡Hola! magazine.

On 23 March 2016, she gave her first speech at the Metropolitan Design Center (CMD) of the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Barracas, where she presented her counterpart Michelle Obama.

Both First Ladies gave a talk to teens to raise awareness about the importance of education.

This speech was held during the official visit made by the Obama family to Argentina on 23–24 March 2016, where they also visited the city of Bariloche, in the Argentine Patagonia.