Behind every successful man, there is a strong woman. This maxim is often recalled in connection with the winners of the day. In the case of the New York mayoral elections, held on November 4, the maxim is also valid for the winner - Democrat Zohran Mamdani, noted the media "Fortune", BBC, "Arttribune", "Independent", "Forbes", "Glamour", Associated Press, "New York Times", "Kozyor" etc.
Specifically, in the case of the newly elected mayor of New York, the strong women next to him are two - his mother, director Mira Nair, and his wife, illustrator Rama Sawaf Duaji. They are now also in the spotlight.
Zohran Mamdani's mother - Mira Nair, was born in October 1957 in Rourkela in the Indian state of Odisha. She is the only child in the family of an officer and a social worker. She also has two brothers. Mira Nair attended an English school in Rourkela, and then when her family moved to Bhubaneswar, the capital of Odisha, she was sent to study at an English high school in the city of Shimla in the state of Himachal Pradesh. There, Mira Nair fell in love with English literature. She also painted, wrote poems, was actively involved in music and participated in performances in a local theater. She then studied sociology at the Girls' College of the University of Delhi. During her studies, she joined an amateur theater troupe. At the age of 19, Mira Nair went to the United States to study at Harvard University, after winning a scholarship. There, she studied photography and later film directing.
In the early days of her film career, Nair mainly made documentaries that focused on Indian cultural traditions. Her thesis at Harvard was an 18-minute black-and-white film titled “Diary from the Streets of Jama Masjid“. It was dedicated to the ordinary residents of the area around the Jama Masjid Mosque in the old part of Delhi. Her next documentary was 52 minutes long and was titled “So Far from India“. It follows the life of an Indian newspaper vendor who spends the night on the New York subway while his pregnant wife awaits him at home in India. Her third documentary, “Indian Cabaret“, filmed with photographer Mitch Epstein, who is also her first husband and was her photography professor at Harvard, follows the lives of strippers in Mumbai and their clients. The 59-minute production was criticized in India by Indian men for portraying Indian women as victims of harassment and domination by Indian men.
After that, Mira Nair began making feature-length films. Among them is “Hello, Bombay!“, which tells the story of homeless children in the Indian metropolis, now known as Mumbai. This production brought Mira Nair many awards. At the 1988 Cannes Film Festival, she won the Camera d'Or award for best feature film, as well as the Audience Award. The film also won the National Board of Review Award for Best Foreign Language Film, was included in The New York Times' list of the 1,000 best films in the world, and was nominated for an Academy Award, a César Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
In 1991, Mira Nair directed the film Mississippi Masala, which tells the story of Indians born in Uganda who then move to Mississippi. The production, starring Denzel Washington, won the Best Original Screenplay award at the Venice Film Festival, the São Paulo Film Festival award, and the Italian National Syndicate of Film Critics Award for Best Director.
In 2001, Nair directed the film “Monsoon Wedding“, focusing on a Punjabi wedding in India, which won her the “Golden Lion“ award at the Venice Film Festival and the Audience Award at the Canberra Film Festival, as well as nominations for the BAFTA Award and “Golden Globe“ for Best Foreign Language Film.
In 2002, Nair directed the television production “Hysterical Blindness“ for HBO, which brought actress Uma Thurman, who played the lead role in it, the “Golden Globe“ award.
In 2005, Nair was invited to direct the production “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix“ from the series of films about the famous boy wizard, but she refused. Among the other films shot by Mira Nair are “Name for Name“, “Vanity Fair“, “The Queen of Katwe“ with Lupita Nyong'o, “Amelia“ about Amelia Earhart with Hilary Swank and Richard Gere.
Mira Nair also continues to make short films. For example, she participated with a short film in the anthology film project 11'09"01 September 11, dedicated to the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Mira Nair is also the organizer of an annual master class in film directing, held in Kampala, Uganda. She has also founded an organization that helps homeless children in India.
In addition to her rich film career, Mira Nair also has a lively personal life. Her first marriage to photographer Mitch Epstein, concluded in 1981, lasted 8 years and the two divorced in 1989. That same year, Nair met her second husband - the Indian-Ugandan political analyst, teacher and writer Mahmud Mamdani. He comes from a Muslim family from Mumbai, who lived in the former British territory of Tanganyika and later moved to Uganda. Mira Nair met him in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. There, she was doing research for one of her films and came across the book "From Citizen to Refugee" by Mahmud Mamdani, after which she decided to meet the author. The two married after 2 years and their son Zohran Mamdani was born that same year in Kampala, Uganda, where the couple lived while Mahmud Mamdani taught at the prestigious Ugandan University "Makerere". In 1996, the family moved to Cape Town, South Africa, where Mahmud Mamdani received a new teaching appointment. The family lived there for 3 years. Then they moved to New York when Zohran Mamdani was 7 years old.
Politically, Mira Nair is a supporter of the Palestinian cause and criticizes Israel's attitude towards the Palestinians. Her films show that she is also interested in the themes of identity, race, culture, mass migration in the postcolonial world, and prejudices against migrants around the world. Mira Nair focuses more generally on the disadvantaged and isolated on the periphery of society. The same themes excite her husband. In New York, he teaches at Columbia University. The director's family is defined as part of the progressive intellectual bourgeoisie of the metropolis. It is believed that Mira Nair influenced the formation of the philosophy of her son Zohran through her films and the themes she examines in them.
Zohran Mamdani has a bachelor's degree in African studies from the private university in Maine, known as “Bowdine“ College, where tuition is $72,000 per year. There, Zohran headed a local pro-Palestinian organization and has since defined himself as pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist, but not anti-Semitic. In 2014, he began working for an association to help low-income tenants threatened with eviction from their homes. At one point, Zohran also ventured into hip-hop under the creative pseudonym “Young Cardan“, paying tribute to his Indian roots in his songs, but he did not achieve great success in the musical field, recalls the French publication “Kozyor“.
In 2018, Zohran was naturalized as an American citizen. At the time, he was 27 years old and 2 years later he entered politics, running for a seat in the New York State Legislative Assembly, presenting himself as an American Democratic Socialist, the French publication adds. Inspired by Marxism and Leninism, he rejects the oligarchy that he believes is in power in the United States, advocates for a more equal society, demands free social security, free university education, nationalization of basic services such as transportation, supports the rights of migrants and LGBT people. Now he promises a rent freeze, the construction of 200,000 apartments that will be rented out at moderate rents for 10 years, with construction contracts awarded to companies where the workers are 100 percent union members. Mamdani promises free buses on New York City's public transportation system, with tickets now ranging from $2 to $7. He promises free daycare, free healthcare for children up to the age of 5, the creation of municipal grocery stores, a doubling of the minimum hourly wage from $16.50 to $30, the creation of a municipal security department that will ease the work of the municipal police and deal with petty criminals, and will employ social workers, mental health specialists and mediators, and the creation of reception centers for young members of the LGBT community or people who are in the process of changing gender. Mamdani is also an advocate of a wealth tax, specifically for increasing the corporate tax from 8.85 percent to 11.5 percent and for introducing an additional tax of 2 percent for incomes over $1 million per year.
According to Mamdani's observers, his young wife is now a strong influence on his views. Zohran Mamdani's other half is Rama Sawaf Douaji. She was born in 1997 in Houston, Texas, to Syrian Muslims from Damascus who had moved to the United States. Her father is a software engineer and her mother is a doctor. When Rama was 9 years old, her family moved to Dubai.
Rama began drawing while still a schoolgirl. Her drawings dotted her notebooks and textbooks while she was in class. This often got her into trouble with teachers. Her parents supported her love of art, but advised her to be practical when choosing a profession. But Rama did not listen to this advice. After graduating from high school, she began studying at the Doha branch of the Virginia Community College of the Arts in Qatar. She then moved to the school's headquarters in Richmond, Virginia, where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Rama then returned to her family in Dubai, but did not fail to participate in various creative residencies, including in Paris and Beirut. Finally, in 2021, she moved to New York to study illustration at the local School of Visual Arts. She received her master's degree in 2024.
Rama then devoted herself entirely to illustration and animation, focusing on Arab culture, social justice in the Middle East, in particular women's rights in that part of the world. Her works have been published in a number of publications, including the “Washington Post“ and the “New York Times“, as well as in the British media BBC. She also collaborates on several streaming platforms.
Since the beginning of the Gaza war in October 2023, Rama has created many works about this conflict, focusing on the suffering of the Palestinians. She also created an animation in support of the global flotilla for Gaza, on board of which the Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg was also aboard. Rama also has a cycle of works in support of the victims of the civil war in Sudan, which is currently being fought in this African country.
The young woman met Zohran Mamdani at a time when he was already a legislator in the New York State Assembly in 2021. Interestingly, the couple met for the first time on the online dating app “Hinge“. In October last year, Rama and Zohran got engaged and two months later they had a religious marriage, with the ceremony being in accordance with Muslim traditions. In February 2025, the couple also entered into a civil marriage at New York City Hall. The young family also organized a third wedding ceremony in July 2025 in Uganda, Zohran's home country.
Although Rama has been officially married to Zohran Mamdani for the past few months and will now be the first "first lady" of New York from the "Zet generation", the young woman wants to stay away from the spotlight and has already refused a number of interviews. However, she contributed a lot to her husband's election campaign, boosting his presence on social media and creating his election logo, combining bright blue, yellow and orange tones, reminiscent of both the New York subway map and the colors of the New York Mets baseball team, commented the Italian publication “Arttribune“.
Today, Zohran Mamdani says about his partner: “Rama is not only my wife, she is an incredible artist who deserves to be known and recognized for what she is“.
The fact that Zohran Mamdani's life was influenced by two strong women is also evidenced by the fact that he chose only women in his transition team, which he presented on Wednesday. The team will be led by political scientist Ilana Leopold and will also include Grace Bonilla, president of the non-governmental organization that assists low-income New Yorkers, "United Way of New York City", former deputy mayor of the city for budget issues Melanie Hartzog, former Federal Trade Commission chairwoman Lina Hahn and former deputy mayor Maria Torres-Springer, the Associated Press recalls.