Saikat Chakrabarti

Saikat Chakrabarti (, born January 12, 1986) is an American political advisor, climate policy advocate, and software engineer. A progressive Democrat, Chakrabarti co-founded the Justice Democrats, which powered Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's successful insurgent challenge to Representative Joe Crowley, and Chakrabarti served as her campaign manager. He then served as chief of staff to Ocasio-Cortez, who became the U.S. representative from New York's 14th congressional district, in 2019.

Chakrabarti left Ocasio-Cortez's office to run New Consensus, a group promoting the Green New Deal, whose development he led. He ran an unsuccessful campaign to succeed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the representative for California's 11th congressional district in the 2026 U.S House election.

Chakrabarti graduated from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Fort Worth in 2003. He then went on to attend Harvard University, graduating in 2007 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in computer science. Chakrabarti worked at investment management firm Bridgewater Associates, followed by six years in Silicon Valley at a number of startups. Chakrabarti co-founded a web design company called Mockingbird and served as the second engineer at the payments processing company Stripe. According to his financial disclosures, Chakrabarti holds at least $50 million worth of equity in Stripe.

Political career and policy positions

Bernie Sanders campaign and Brand New Congress In 2015, Chakrabarti joined the early stages of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign. Of that decision, Chakrabarti told Rolling Stone, "I wasn't entirely sure he had all the right solutions but I knew he was talking about the right problems." Together with Sheena Pakanati, he developed a messaging tool called Spoke which was released under the MIT license. The software helped volunteers find other volunteers who lived nearby and helped coordinate "millions" of volunteers to call into battleground states, multiplying the effort of local volunteers and staff.

During the Sanders campaign, Chakrabarti worked closely with Alexandra Rojas and Corbin Trent to stage campaign events around the country. Chakrabarti told Rolling Stone that he often heard voters express strong concerns about Congress: "people would say, 'How's he going to get anything done? We just saw what Congress did to Obama for the last eight years, they're gonna do the same thing to Bernie.'" As a result, in the spring of 2016, Chakrabarti (together with Rojas and Trent) co-founded the Brand New Congress political action committee, to recruit 400 new candidates for Congress. The group received many applications and recruited 12 candidates, of whom Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won a seat in Congress.

Justice Democrats In early 2017, after Trump's election, Chakrabarti, Zack Exley, a former fellow Bernie Sanders presidential campaign executive, Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks and Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk became co-founders of the Justice Democrats. As Chakrabarti, Rojas, and Trent were less involved with Brand New Congress, they became leaders of the Justice Democrats. Activist strategies mobilized by Justice Democrats contributed greatly to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's primary win, according to The Intercept.

Chakrabarti expressed a vision of what Democrats should try to do while Republicans hold power in the Senate and Presidency: Chakrabarti publicly supported Bilal Mahmood's run as a Democrat for California's 17th State Assembly district in a 2022 special election on September 30, 2021. Together, he and Mahmood planned an environmental framework similar to the Green New Deal for California, including a carbon tax to fund zero-interest loans for green retrofits.

Amazon HQ2 withdrawal from Queens In February 2019, Chakrabarti appeared as a guest on Bloomberg News to clarify Ocasio-Cortez's role in Amazon's decision to pull its planned HQ2 from Long Island City, Queens, saying she objected to the process by which it had received its original deal, but had no specific animus toward the company. He stated that AOC's goal had been to see the local community more involved in discussions, but once community members joined the discussion, Amazon made the decision to withdraw. Chakrabarti elaborated further that Amazon would be welcome to return to the negotiating table under the condition that the company engage adequately with the local communities to be affected by the project.

Immigration reform Chakrabarti worked on the part of the Justice Democrats platform which included abolishing ICE. To the question of whether a different agency should take its place, he replied "everyone has a different idea of what happens after".

In a 2019 tweet, Chakrabarti wrote that the New Democrats and Blue Dog Caucus should be called "the New Southern Democrats" for voting to "enable a racist system". This was in response to Democratic representatives approving an aid package which included funding for southern border enforcement. The House Democratic Caucus Twitter account, managed by Hakeem Jeffries, objected to his referring to Sharice Davids by name in these posts and attacked him for his perceived targeting of a Native American woman and person of color.

Resignation as chief of staff On August 2, 2019, Representative Ocasio-Cortez announced that Saikat Chakrabarti "has decided to leave the office to work with New Consensus to further develop plans for a Green New Deal."

Housing Chakrabarti supports an "all-of-the-above" approach to combat the housing crisis in the United States. He has advocated cutting "red tape to accelerate development", increasing funding "for low-income housing" and creating a federal agency to provide "low-interest financing to pay for home construction." Chakrabarti has also criticized the "tribal politics" surrounding the housing and cost-of-living crises in San Francisco, arguing that such dynamics have worsened these problems instead of encouraging engagement with fresh ideas.

2026 congressional campaign

On February 5, 2025, Chakrabarti announced his candidacy for California's 11th congressional district in 2026, challenging former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the Democratic primary. In his announcement, he affirmed his respect for Pelosi, but stated, "it's become clear to me that the Democratic Party needs new leadership," and added that Democratic congressional leaders were "paralyzed and unprepared" for the second Trump presidency.

On November 6, 2025, Pelosi announced that she would not be seeking re-election for her seat, leaving it open for the first time in 40 years. State senator Scott Wiener and supervisor Connie Chan also announced campaigns for the seat. In March 2026, Justice Democrats backed his campaign. Numerous media outlets noted that his former employer, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, declined to endorse him and avoided mentioning him in interviews.

Among the election issues were Chakrabarti's residence. He first moved to San Francisco in 2009. In 2018, he bought a house in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and identified it as his principal place of residence, both on loan forms and on more than one Maryland tax form. Chakrabarti said that he bought the home for his parents, never actually lived there, and only stayed there for periods of a couple of months at most.

Personal life Chakrabarti is married to Kamilka Malwatte; they have a daughter, born in 2019. In December 2025, Business Insider estimated his net worth to be at least $167 million primarily from equity in Stripe.