Josefina Eugenia Vázquez Mota ( [xo̞.se̞'fi.na'βas.ke̞s'mo̞.ta]) (born 20 January 1961, in Mexico City) is a businessperson and politician who was the presidential candidate of the National Action Party (PAN) for the 2012 elections. Vázquez Mota was trained as an economist and began her working career in family businesses and with various business organizations and conferences, also working as a journalist and writing books. She began her political career with the organization, becoming involved in Mexico’s federal Chamber of Deputies of Mexico and then in the administrations of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón. She was PAN's first female candidate for president. Background Vázquez Mota was born in Mexico City on 20 January 1961. Her parents, Arnulfo Vázquez and Josefina Mota, are from the Sierra Norte de Puebla region of Mexico, and she has seven brothers and sisters. She says she is closest to her sister Lupita. When they were children they use to sell chocolate shakes on the street with a blender Josefina received for Day of the Magi. Vázquez Mota spent the first five years of her childhood in a working-class neighborhood called Colonia 20 de Noviembre in Mexico City and began her education in public school, starting at “La Patria es Primero” school in the Azcapotzalco borough. Her father originally wanted her to attend an all-girls high school, even paying a full year’s tuition in advance. While she did begin high school there, Josefina convinced her parents to let her take the entrance exam and enter CECyT 9 vocational school, affiliated with the Instituto Politécnico Nacional. Josefina was studious in school with an affinity for mathematics. Vázquez Mota studied at the private Universidad Iberoamericana, graduating with a degree in economics. Other university studies included courses in management at the Instituto Panamericano de Alta Dirección de Empresas, as well as a program called "Ideas e Instituciones" ("Ideas and Institutions") at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. Vázquez Mota met her husband, Sergio Ocampo Muñoz, a computer specialist, while in high school. The couple married in 1984 after seven years of courtship. The couple have three children: María José; Celia María; and Montserrat. Vázquez Mota maintains a very strict diet and exercise regimen, as evidenced by an unusually thin physique. She has consistently denied speculation that she suffers from either bulimia or anorexia. Non-political career Vázquez Mota began to get involved in economic conferences due to a friend of her father’s