John Fetterman’s wife is Gisele Barreto Fetterman. However, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, born on February 27, 1982, is a philanthropist, nonprofit executive, and activist with a Brazilian-American heritage.
She established Freestore 15104 and co-founded the nonprofits For Good PGH and 412 Food Rescue.
Gisele is married to John Fetterman, a US Senator and former Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania.
Early Life
Gisele Fetterman was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and immigrated to the United States at seven, along with her mother and younger brother, escaping the violence in their hometown.
They took up residence in a one-room apartment in New York City and struggled with poverty, often relying on food banks and thrift stores.
Gisele’s mother, who held a Ph.D. in nutrition and education, worked as a hotel and house cleaner but faced exploitation due to her status as an undocumented immigrant.
Upon arrival in the US, Gisele did not know English but soon enrolled in an ESL program at her school in Queens.
The family transferred to Newark, New Jersey, where she learned at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. In 2004, she obtained her green card and became a citizen of the United States 2009.
Relationship And Kids
According to property records in Essex County, NJ, Gisele and Diego Londono were married from 2002 to 2005.
In 2007, Gisele wrote a letter to John Fetterman, the then-mayor of Braddock, PA, inquiring about the town’s involvement in the steel industry.
This eventually led to the two meetings and getting married the following year. They now reside in a renovated loft, located in a former car dealership building from 1920, in Braddock, along with their three children – Karl, Grace, and August – and their rescue dog, Levi, whom John adopted from The Foster Farm.
Gisele is a friend of Kim Kardashian and endorsed Senator Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries and later supported former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 US Presidential Election.
In 2020, Gisele was the center of an online controversy after her husband posted a picture of her in a Rio Carnival costume on social media, which was met with negative comments from a local official.
She also publicly spoke about using medical marijuana to treat her chronic back pain in August of that year.
On October 11, 2020, Gisele was confronted by a bystander who used racial slurs and told her she didn’t belong in America due to her Brazilian background.
Career
As the First woman of Braddock, Pennsylvania, Gisele established The Braddock Free Store, a nonprofit aimed at providing local lower-income families with various necessities such as toys, diapers, baby formula, clothing, household items, and furniture.
The organization serves nearly 1,600 families each month. Additionally, she initiated the Braddock Bench Project, which aims to add benches to local bus stops.
In 2015, Gisele co-founded 412 Food Rescue, a nonprofit that addresses food insecurity and provides nutritional resources to families in need.
Within its first two years, the organization successfully redistributed 2.5 million pounds of food. Furthermore, she started the Positive Parking Signs Project, a local effort installing signs in communities with uplifting messages like “Follow Your Dreams” and “More Hugs Needed.”
In 2017, she founded For Good PGH, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting diversity and inclusion, which later brought Free Store 15104 under its umbrella in 2019.
