Sadaf Jaffer


Sadaf Jaffer is an American politician and scholar. She is the Mayor of Montgomery Township, Somerset County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, having taken office on January 3, 2019. She is the first woman of South Asian descent to serve as mayor of a town in New Jersey, and the first Muslim woman to serve as a mayor in the United States. Jaffer was first elected to Montgomery's township committee in 2017. She is a postdoctoral research associate at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.

Early life, family and education

Jaffer was born in Chicago to Muslim immigrants. Her mother was born in Karachi, Pakistan and her father was born in Aden, Yemen. Her ancestors are originally from the Kutch region of India.
She attended the Latin School of Chicago, earned a bachelor's degree from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and a PhD at Harvard University.
In 2011, Jaffer married Daniel Sheffield, an assistant professor in the Near Eastern Studies department at Princeton. They had met at Harvard and have one child.

Mayorality

In 2016, Jaffer launched an unsuccessful write-in campaign. The following year she won a seat on the township committee on the Democratic ticket. In 2019, she was appointed to the position as mayor by her fellow committee members. She was sworn in on January 3, 2019, becoming the first the first woman of South Asian descent to serve as mayor of a town in New Jersey, and the first Muslim woman to serve as a mayor in the United States.