Meet Rama Duwaji, Mamdani's wife and New York’s first lady of Syrian descent
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's wife, Rama Duwaji, largely stayed out of the spotlight during the campaign but her Syrian heritage has shaped her views and upbringing.
Following the historic win of New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani as mayor-elect of New York City on Tuesday night — making him the first Muslim and South Asian to win the top position in America's largest city — attention has now turned to his wife, Syrian-American Rama Duwaji, who had largely stayed out of the limelight during his electoral campaign.
With Mamdani’s victory, Duwaji, 28, has now become New York City's youngest first lady and the first of Syrian descent.
Who is Duwaji?
Duwaji was born in Houston, Texas, on June 30, 1997, to Syrian Muslim parents from a prominent Damascus family. Her father is reportedly a computer engineer and her mother a doctor. According to some reports, the family would spend their summers in Damascus before moving to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates when she was nine years old.
As a young adult, Duwaji joined a design program at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar before transferring in 2016 to the university’s main campus in Richmond, Virginia, to complete her degree in illustration. She later earned her master’s degree in illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
There, Duwaji met Mamdani through the dating app, Hinge, in 2021 shortly after he was elected to the New York Assembly in October of that year. In October 2024 — just days before Mamdani announced his candidacy for mayor — the couple got engaged and two months later held a traditional Muslim wedding ceremony in Dubai, where Duwaji’s family resides.
In February 2025, the two tied the knot in a civil ceremony at the Manhattan City Clerk's Office.
Duwaji now works as an illustrator and ceramicist, and her website includes the New Yorker, the Washington Post, BBC, Apple, Spotify, VICE and the Tate Modern among her list of clients.
Helping behind the scenes
Since Mamdani announced his mayoral bid in October 2024, Duwaji largely remained out of the public eye, only appearing alongside her husband on rare occasions such as his win in the Democratic primary in June.
On Tuesday, Duwaji accompanied her husband at the polling station before joining him onstage to celebrate his victory later that day.
She declined to give interviews on Mamdani's campaign and did not attend political debates and other events throughout the campaign.
While her Instagram account appears largely dedicated to her art, Duwaji posted a carousel of pictures shortly after his primary victory in June, including of her and Mamdani and one of him as a small child, captioning the post, “Couldn’t possibly be prouder.”
Nevertheless, a person familiar with the couple revealed to CNN that Duwaji worked behind the scenes and helped design his campaign material. Reports also suggest that the artist worked on his social media strategy.
Political activism
As she appeared to have taken a back seat in her husband’s campaign, Duwaji instead devoted her time to art. Her social media presence features artwork dedicated to political issues such as the plight of Palestinians amid a humanitarian crisis since Israel launched its military campaign against the Gaza Strip in October 2023.
These posts seem to align with her husband’s pro-Palestinian positions and criticism of Israel over the war and siege of Gaza.
At the start of the Sudanese civil war in April 2023, she created an illustration of a Sudanese woman, with text reading, “Eyes on Sudan.” She included information about the impact of the conflict on civilians and on ways to help and support refugees.
Her website also shares various works including a short animated documentary featured on the BBC, about the unsolved murder of former Yemeni Foreign Minister Mohamed Noman in 1974.
“Things are dark right now in NYC,” she told the quarterly magazine Yung in an interview back in April. “With so many people being pushed out and silenced by fear, all I can do is use my voice to speak out about what’s happening in the US and Palestine and Syria as much as I can.”
While she appears adamant on maintaining her privacy, Duwaji has spoken in the past about her Syrian origins. In an interview with Shado Magazine back in May 2019, the artist recounted that she became proud of her Syrian heritage only after moving to the US in 2016.
“I was living in the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] for 10 years as the Amreekiya, the American (I’m fully Syrian, but I had lighter hair at the time, had ‘Western’ ideas, and couldn’t speak Arabic as fluently),” she told the magazine. “But when I got to America I realized I definitely was not really American in the typical sense either, I just couldn’t relate.”
“My sense of identity took a hit so I think I kind of clung to my Middle Eastern identity, whatever that is. It’s not inherently Syrian nor Emirati, but whatever it is, it definitely influenced my work in a major way,” she added.
Duwaji has shared photos on Instagram of what appears to be her vacationing in Damascus in June 2023 and June 2021.
Also in September 2018, she posted a carousel of photos captioned “Beirut archives,” suggesting that she was in the Lebanese capital at that time.
