Huma Mahmood Abedin (born July 28, 1975) is an American political staffer who was chief of staff to former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Abedin served as vice chair of Clinton's campaign for President of the United States in 2016. Before that, Abedin was deputy chief of staff to Clinton from 2009 to 2012 when Clinton served as U.S. Secretary of State. She was also the travelling chief of staff to Clinton during her campaign for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential election. Abedin is the author of the 2021 memoir Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds.

Abedin was born on July 28, 1975, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Syed Zainul Abedin, a professor (Ph.D., American Literature), and his wife Saleha Mahmood Abedin, also a professor. Abedin is of Pakistani and Indian descent. She has two brothers and a sister.

When Abedin was two years old, her parents were offered jobs at the University of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. Abedin moved with her family to Jeddah where she was raised and lived until returning to the United States for college. Abedin traveled frequently during her childhood and teenage years, and attended a British girls' school. Her father died from progressive renal failure when she was 17.

At George Washington University, she earned a Bachelor of Arts as a journalism major with a minor in political science.

While a student at George Washington University, Abedin began working as an intern in the White House in 1996, assigned to then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. From 1996 to 2008, she was an assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. For several years, she served as the back-up to Clinton's personal aide. She officially took over as Clinton's aide and personal advisor during Clinton's successful 2000 U.S. Senate campaign in New York and later worked as traveling chief of staff and "body woman" during Clinton's unsuccessful campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. According to a number of Clinton associates, Abedin is a trusted advisor to Clinton on the Middle East, and has become known for that expertise.

In 2009, Abedin was appointed deputy chief of staff to Clinton in the State Department. After returning from maternity leave in June 2012, she left her position as Clinton's deputy chief of staff and became a special government employee, a consultant role; this status allowed Abedin to work for private clients as a consultant while also serving as an adviser to the Secretary of State. Under this arrangement, she did consultant work for Teneo, a strategic consulting firm whose clients included Coca-Cola and MF Global, and served as a paid consultant to the Clinton Foundation, while continuing her role as body woman to Clinton. The New York Times reported that an associate of Abedin's said the arrangement also allowed her to work from her home in New York City rather than at the State Department's headquarters in Washington to be able to spend more time with her child and husband.

After leaving her post at the State Department in 2013, Abedin served as director of the transition team that helped Clinton return to private life,^{[failed verification]} and continued her work for the Clinton Foundation. Eleven days before leaving the State Department, Abedin set up a private consulting firm, Zain Endeavors LLC.

Starting in 2015, Abedin served as vice-chairperson for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign for president, while continuing to serve as personal assistant to Clinton. In her role as the campaign's vice-chairperson, she screened and interviewed applicants for key campaign roles, including campaign manager Robby Mook, and was the primary channel for communications with Clinton before the campaign officially began. After Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump proposed banning travel from Muslim countries into the United States, Abedin wrote an email to Clinton supporters calling herself "a proud Muslim" and criticized Trump's plan as "literally (writing) racism into our law books".