Rama Duwaji, the Gen Z artist who will be First Lady of New York and 'designed' Mamdani's campaign
She is 28 years old and married Zohran Mamdani this year. He worked away from the spotlight on his social media message and election iconography.
At 28, Rama Duwaji is as much the face of change as her husband, Zohran Mamdani, whom she married this year. She will be New York's first first lady of Gen Z. Her role in the newly elected mayor of New York's campaign has also been untraditional: away from the spotlight, though some presence at crucial moments, including Mamdani's victory speech last night. But she didn't shy away from where she was convinced she could make a difference: of her husband's electoral race she chose the colours and font used for the lettering, planned and strengthened the social presence.
More often he refused interviews and speeches and preferred to blend into the crowd of supporters, as in the recent big rally in the Queens stadium where ten thousand listened to Mamdami's final words of the campaign flanked by stars of the Democratic left such as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders.
She is an illustrator and animator by profession, an art with which she wanted to give voice to the Middle East, women and the Palestinian rights movement before the campaign. Her black and white images are often inspired by the hunger in Gaza and the Palestinian flag, showing a progressive sensibility similar to that of her husband. "I create my work for people who care about the things I care about," she told Yung, a magazine dedicated to African and Middle Eastern art. "With so many people hunted down and silenced by fear, what I can do is use my voice to speak out about what is happening in the US and Palestine and Syria
Born in Houston, Texas to Syrian parents, Duwaji moved to Dubai with her family when she was nine years old. She attended Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar before moving back to the US, to the same university's campus in Richmond. After graduating, he received a master's degree in illustration from the School of Visual Arts (Sva) in New York. His work has appeared in the BBC, Vogue and the New Yorker magazine.
In New York, she met Mamdani, freshly elected as a state assemblyman, via the dating app Hinge. It was 2021 and on their first date they went to Qahwah House, a Yemeni café in Brooklyn. At the end of 2024, the two got engaged and then celebrated their union with a party in Dubai before getting married last February at the New York City Hall.
