Haider told NDTV she felt “honoured and privileged” to represent residents of District 84. The 40-year-old said she first called her mother in Ghaziabad after the win. Her mother had been asking for results throughout the day, Haider recalled, though she told her they would not come in before 8 p.m. and that she could not predict the outcome.
The victory followed a narrow defeat in the same race in 2022, when Haider lost by 1,000 votes. Before entering politics, she taught yoga. She also won a landmark election for the DuPage County Board, which governs nearly a million residents and is Illinois’ second-largest county.
Haider’s family is originally from Aurangabad in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district. Her father moved to Ghaziabad for work, taking the family with him. She topped her BSc class at Ram Chameli Chadha Vishwas Girls’ College and later earned an MSc in Wildlife Sciences from Aligarh Muslim University, where she won a gold medal and worked on wildlife censuses, according to online reports.
She married computer science engineer Ali Kazmi in 2006 and moved to the United States. The couple has lived in the Naperville area of Illinois for nearly 20 years and has two children.
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