Cindy McCain

Cindy McCain (born May 20, 1954, Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.) is an American businesswoman and humanitarian and the wife of U.S. senator and two-time Republican presidential candidate John McCain. After serving as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Agencies for Food and Agriculture (2021–23), she was appointed by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in 2023 to lead the UN World Food Programme as its executive director.

Cindy Hensley was the only child of Marguerite Smith and James Hensley, who in 1955 founded Hensley & Co., a beer-distribution company. She studied education at the University of Southern California (B.A., 1976; M.A., 1978) before teaching special-needs students at a high school in Avondale, Arizona. While vacationing with her parents in Hawaii in 1979, she met John McCain—a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War who was at that time the navy’s chief liaison to the U.S. Senate—and the two began a relationship. In early 1980 he filed for divorce from his first wife, Carol Shepp, and in May of that year he and Cindy married.

The couple moved to Arizona, where John began his political career. When he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1982, Cindy quit her teaching position and moved with him to Washington, D.C. In 1984, having suffered from a series of miscarriages and feeling alienated in Washington, she moved back to Arizona. In 1988 she founded the American Voluntary Medical Team (AVMT), a nonprofit organization that provided medical care to people in impoverished and war-ravaged countries throughout the world. Cindy herself led more than 50 excursions to deliver aid and supplies. In the late 1980s she became addicted to prescription painkillers, and in 1994 she publicly admitted to stealing medication from the AVMT. Through an agreement with federal prosecutors, she avoided jail time, and the AVMT ceased operating in 1995.

Cindy served as both vice president and director of Hensley & Co. Upon the death of her father in 2000, she became chairman of the company, which by that time had become one of the largest and most profitable distributors of beer in the United States. That year she helped her husband campaign for the Republican presidential nomination; he was defeated in the primary by George W. Bush, then governor of Texas. After suffering a stroke in April 2004, she temporarily relocated to Coronado, California, to recover. Cindy supported her husband’s second bid for the Republican presidential nomination, and she was instrumental in restructuring the campaign staff after financial difficulties threatened to end his run in the summer of 2007. John received the Republican nomination in September 2008, but he was defeated by Democratic candidate Barack Obama in the general election on November 4.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Cindy worked with numerous humanitarian groups, including the Hazardous Area Life-Support Organisation (HALO) Trust, a group dedicated to removing land mines and other potentially hazardous remnants of war; Operation Smile, a medical organization that helps repair facial deformities in children in developing countries; and CARE, which is committed to fighting poverty, particularly among women. McCain also supported same-sex marriage and was involved in efforts to end human trafficking.

In 2017 it was announced that McCain’s husband was suffering from glioblastoma, a common but extremely malignant brain tumour. He died the following year. In 2020 Cindy made headlines when she endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, a longtime friend of John’s, and later appeared in a TV campaign ad for him; Biden was running against Republican Pres. Donald Trump, who had made derogatory remarks about John on several occasions. Biden ultimately won the election, and in 2021 he nominated McCain for ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture. She was confirmed by the Senate later that year. In 2023 she was appointed by UN Secretary-General António Guterres to lead the UN World Food Programme.